While President-elect Donald Trump pledged to “come together as one united people,” a top House Republican he will continue to investigate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, the Washington Post reports. Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman leading the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made it clear the partisan bitterness that marked the presidential campaign is not going to go away. “It would be totally remiss of us to dismiss [the email investigation] because she’s not going to be president,” Chaffetz said of the defeated Democratic nominee.
“I still have a duty and obligation to get to the truth about one of the largest breaches of security at the State Department,” he said. “Tens of thousands of documents still have not been turned over to Congress.” Last week, senior Republicans were openly discussing the prospect of impeaching Clinton for setting up a private email server for official State Department business, even though the FBI concluded after two investigations that she should not be criminally prosecuted. Chaffetz said he has a “duty” to find thousands of Clinton’s communications that have not been made public to determine if they contain classified information. Trump’s campaign call to prosecute Clinton could culminate in a pre-emptive presidential pardon like the one granted to former President Richard Nixon more than 40 years ago, McClatchy Newspapers reports. “There are many examples in history of pre-conviction pardons, though none as open-ended as Nixon’s,” said former Justice Department chief pardon attorney Margaret Love.