Former GOP rep Jason Chaffetz on Fox: The deep state ‘is very real’

Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said Wednesday morning that the deep state is “very real,” adding that he “lived through it.”

“Today is going to be a big day, because Devin Nunes has subpoenaed a bunch of records from the Department of Justice,” “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade said when introducing Chaffetz, who signed on as a Fox News contributor in 2016.

“We will find out exactly how many of them show up and how many of them are blacked out,” added co-host Steve Doocy.

{mosads}”John Solomon has some good reporting over at The Hill where they revealed yesterday that there is … written evidence that apparently the FBI believed that laws were broken regarding the Hillary Clinton email scandal. And it looks like that IT guy covered things up when he, even though they were subpoenaing the email records, he went and [used computer software BleachBit] or whatever he did to it to destroy the hard drive,” Doocy continued.

Chaffetz said he believed that Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, would be indicted in July 2016, before former FBI Director James Comey announced that she would not.

“There was hammers, there was BleachBit. When you listen to James Comey back in July of 2016, you really thought that she was actually to get indicted. But this is a closed case. So there no reason why the Department of Justice should hold back any documents from the Congress,” he said

“Well, then why are they?” asked Doocy.

“Well, the key you that you need to listen for today is, I guarantee you, the Department of Justice will tout how many documents they are turning over,” Chaffetz replied. “The question that [House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman] Trey Gowdy always asked, which is the right one, is what percentage of the documents? Because, if you want 100 percent of the truth on a closed case, hen turn over all the documents. But I don’t think they’re going to do it. They’ve been asking for these documents under subpoena since August and they still haven’t gotten them.”

“Is it the deep state?” Doocy asked.

“It is the deep state,” Chaffetz said. “I was a little skeptical … but I’m telling you, having lived through it, it is very real.”

The commentary from Chaffetz comes after Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, slammed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last Thursday while accusing the Justice Department of ignoring subpoenas sent by the committee last August.

His Dec. 28 letter alleges the FBI ignored Nunes’s requests for information pertaining to a dossier of opposition research, which contains unverified and salacious information linking President Trump to Russia that was compiled by a former British intelligence agent and paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

“Shortly before my meeting with you in early December, DOJ subsequently located and produced numerous FD-302s pertaining to the Steele dossier, thereby rendering the initial response disingenuous at best,” Nunes wrote to Rosenstein.

FD-302s are FBI forms that include reports or summaries of interviews.

“Given the content and impact of these supposedly newly discovered FD-302s, the Committee is no longer able to accept your purported basis for DOJ’s blanket refusal to provide responsive FBI Form FD-1023s—documenting meetings between FBI officials and FBI confidential human sources—or anything less than full and complete compliance with its subpoenas,” Nunes wrote.