Congressional Republicans aren’t letting FBI Director James Comey off the hook without answer questions after his recommendation on Tuesday that Hillary Clinton should not be charged over her email scandal.
A total of five congressional committees will either hold hearings with high-profile law enforcement officials over the next week or have already begun inquiries to the FBI about its investigation of the former secretary of State.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called for Clinton to be barred from the intelligence briefings typically given to presidential nominees and said that State Department officials should be subjected to administrative penalties for support of the former secretary’s use of a private email server. […]
Congress has just a few days left before it skips town for the presidential nominating conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia, and Republicans are giving signals that they intend to spend much of that time hammering home their criticism that the presumptive Democratic nominee is deceitful and has endangered national security.
The questions will kick off Thursday morning, with Comey set to appear before the House Oversight Committee. First and foremost, the FBI director will have to explain his decision despite saying the former secretary of state’s behavior was “extremely careless,” Chairman Jason Chaffetz said on Fox News.
“If somehow somebody is dealing in classified information for years at a time and putting people in harm’s way and yet people are still not prosecuted, the law probably needs to be updated or they’re not properly applying the law,” Chaffetz said. “That’s why we need to explore this.”
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Next Tuesday, Lynch will testify before the House Judiciary Committee.
And two days after that, Comey is scheduled to be back on Capitol Hill to sit before the House Homeland Security Committee, a spokeswoman said. The briefing will examine worldwide threats, but will surely be used as an opportunity for lawmakers to take shots at the Clinton investigation.
In the Senate, leaders of the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees have sent letters to Comey asking for additional information about the FBI’s probe.
Hearings haven’t been scheduled yet, but Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested they might not be far off.
Top Senate Republicans are also pushing the FBI to release the transcript of its interview with Clinton over the holiday weekend.
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