Ex-ethics chief: History will judge Congress harshly for going after Clinton while ignoring Trump

The former director of the Office of Government Ethics blasted Congress for opening new investigations involving Hillary Clinton, saying “history will judge [them] harshly.”

“History will judge harshly Congress re-litigating old claims about the world’s most investigated biped while shirking exec. branch oversight,” Walter Shaub tweeted on Friday.

History will judge harshly Congress re-litigating old claims about the world’s most investigated biped while shirking exec. branch oversight

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) October 27, 2017

Shaub also tweeted a link to a FactCheck.org post on congressional investigations into former President Obama’s administration’s approval of a uranium deal with a Russian-owned energy company.

https://t.co/W4TH4PCrSA

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) October 27, 2017

On Tuesday, House Republicans launched two separate investigations involving Clinton. The Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees announced they would jointly investigation the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state.

{mosads}The Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced it would join the Intelligence Committee in investigating the sale of a uranium company to Russia, which occurred while Clinton was the nation’s top diplomat. The deal was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which includes nine federal departments and offices.

Republican leaders in the House said new questions were raised last week after The Hill reported that before the Obama administration had approved the Uranium One sale, the FBI had gathered evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering to infiltrate the U.S. energy market. 

“New evidence has just come out,” Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told The Hill. “We found out within the last week there could have been an investigation by the FBI. That’s very pertinent.”

In a statement, the chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees said the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s email use “led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered.”

The top Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary committees slammed the new investigations as “a massive diversion to distract from the lack of Republican oversight of the Trump Administration and the national security threat that Russia poses.”