Democrats denounce new Hillary Clinton email probe as ‘massive diversion’ from Trump-Russia investigation
Democrats have denounced as a “massive diversion” from the Trump administration’s alleged links to Russia, a decision by Republicans to launch investigations into the FBI’s handling of a probe into Hillary Clinton.
The Republican chairmen of two House committees said they would jointly investigate the Department of Justice’s handling of a 2016 inquiry into Ms Clinton’s use of a private email server.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, said they had many questions about the way Ms Clinton dealt with classified information.
“Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognise wealth, power, or social status,” the congressmen said in a statement.
“The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight.”
In addition, Republican congressman Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was to look into the details of a 2010 uranium deal with Russia, carried out while Barack Obama was president.
The FBI carried out an investigation into Ms Clinton’s private use of an email server while she was serving as Secretary of State.
While the bureau was very critical of her behaviour, then FBI Director James Comey announced in the summer of 2016 he did not believe there were grounds for criminal prosecution.
The move angered many Republicans and critics of Ms Clinton, who believed that Mr Comey’s decision was politically motivated. In October of that year, with the presidential election looming, Mr Comey told Congress he was reopening the matter because of new emails found on the computer of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Ms Clinton senior aide, Huma Abedin. On November 6, two days before voting, he said the search of Mr Weiner’s computer had found no new evidence.
Ms Clinton said she believed Mr Comey eve of election intervention had been a key factor in her surprise defeat to Donald Trump.
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” she told a women’s conference in May.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign, but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Comey’s letter and Russian WikiLeaks. The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days.”
A number of commentators suggested the flurry of Republican action was an effort to distract from the ongoing federal investigation, headed by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s alleged efforts to interfere in the presidential election.
Democrats reacted by casting the moves in such terms.
“This new investigation is a massive diversion to distract from the lack of Republican oversight of the Trump administration and the national security threat that Russia poses,” Democratic congressmen Elijah Cummings and John Conyers said in a statement.
“Apparently, House Republicans are more concerned about Jim Comey than Vladimir Putin.”
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