House Republicans unceremoniously ended their investigation into the
way the FBI and the Department of Justice handled Hillary Clinton’s
email scandal and the bias allegations against President Trump.
The
House probe was led by the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee and the Judiciary Committee and sought to look into
allegations that the FBI and the DOJ were biased against Trump during
the 2016 presidential election and favored Clinton’s candidacy.
Two Republicans chairing the committees – Reps. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Robert Goodlatte, R-Va. – said in a
letter Friday
that the DOJ must appoint a special counsel to investigate the
“seemingly disparate treatment” of the investigations into Clinton’s use
of private emails and Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
The
letter came less than a week before the Republicans formally lose
control of the House to Democrats, while both Gowdy and Goodlatte are
retiring from politics.
The Democrats have long criticized the
Republican-led probe as a distraction from Mueller’s Russia
investigation, with U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who
sits on the House Intelligence Committee, taunting Republicans for their
unceremonious end of the probe.
“This is how the House Republican
effort to undermine Mueller by ‘investigating the investigators’ ends.
Not with a bang, but with a Friday, buried-in-the-holidays whimper, and
one foot out the door,” he wrote in a tweet.
But both Gowdy and Goodlatte reject criticism that their investigation undermined the Mueller probe.
“Contrary
to Democrat and media claims, there has been no effort to discredit the
work of the special counsel,” they said. “Quite the opposite, whatever
product is produced by the special counsel must be trusted by Americans
and that requires asking tough but fair questions about investigative
techniques both employed and not employed.”
The lawmakers sent the
letter to the Justice Department and Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, R-Ky., saying that their investigation “revealed troubling
facts which exacerbated our initial questions and concerns.” The House
investigation didn’t produce a full final report of the panel's
findings.
Republicans say top FBI officials were biased against
then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016, pointing to Peter Strzok, the
disgraced FBI official who was ousted from Robert Mueller’s team and
later from the agency after his anti-Trump text messages with his
colleague and lover Lisa Page were revealed.
STRZOK, PAGE AND THE FBI TEXTING SCANDAL EXPLAINED
The
pair exchanged more than 50,000 text messages throughout the 2016
presidential election, with many of them expressing anti-Trump
sentiments. In one message, Page asked Strzok if Trump could become
president, prompting his reply: “No. No he won't. We'll stop it.”
Goodlatte
and Gowdy also refer to the report by the Justice Department’s internal
watchdog earlier this year that claims Strzok’s anti-Trump text
messages raise questions about the agency’s bias, while fired FBI
Director James Comey repeatedly broke the protocol.
The lawmakers
also stress in the letter that the probe into Clinton’s use of emails
was too lenient and cleared her of any wrongdoing without sufficient
inquiry into the controversy.
The letter urges Congress to
continue the investigation, saying that “while Congress does not have
the power to appoint a special counsel, Congress does have the power to
continue to investigate,” and notes that “the facts uncovered thus far”
merit the continuation of the probe.
