A call from the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, along with ex-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her email scandal may as well have been "written on a White House letterhead," Rep. Adam Schiff said Friday.
"This letter from the Judiciary Committee is very concerning," the California Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "It's an amplification of the president's tweets."
On Thursday, nearly two dozen Republicans signed off on a letter calling for the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Clinton campaign controversies, according to Fox News.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. led the effort, sending the letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
"The American public has a right to know the facts — all of them — surrounding the election and its aftermath," they wrote. "We urge you to appoint a second special counsel to ensure these troubling, unanswered questions are not relegated to the dustbin of history."
It is not Congress' role to send such a letter, said Schiff, nor is it the attorney general's role to investigate it.
"This is an effort to push the attorney general and a way of again distracting attention away from the Russian investigation, [and saying] we want to turn you back to our favorite object of attention and scorn, Hillary Clinton," said Schiff.
Schiff on Friday also discussed the testimony given earlier this week by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, to the House Intelligence Committee, saying Kushner was cooperative and answered the questions brought to him.
"We will need to bring him back, he answered the questions and give us a lot of follow-up work to do, which we will be pursuing," said Schiff.
However, Schiff had criticized the hearing process on Wednesday, telling reporters that during the Tuesday interview, committee chairman Trey Gowdy "took the role as a second attorney for Mr. Kushner," Bloomberg News reports.
The committee did not, however, have some of the documents it needed in the Kushner case to put in front of him, including documents he'd amended, so there could not be much information gathered about when and why the items had been altered.
"I think it's certainly an issue for the agency that holds the security clearance," said Schiff, "and why wasn't it fully reported, these contacts the first time or even the second time."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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