The Republican committee chairmen in charge of a year-long probe of how the FBI and Justice Department handled investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged Russia ties and Hillary Clinton’s emails again called for a second special counsel to look into the issues, reports the Washington Post. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) asked acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to “continue to identify and eliminate bias” at the federal law enforcement agencies “so the public can trust the institutions to make decisions solely on the facts and the law and totally devoid of political bias or consideration.” Goodlatte and Gowdy said DOJ investigators in 2016 “were biased against President Trump.”
The House GOP leaned heavily on details in an inspector general report released earlier this year to make their arguments. The inspector general found that while certain individuals, such as former FBI counterintelligence officer Peter Strzok, displayed clear personal bias against Trump, there was no evidence that the conclusions of the investigations were biased. After dozens of mostly closed-door interviews and months of high-profile partisan clashes, a letter from Goodlatte and Gowdy offers no discernibly new insights or recommendations for how the federal law enforcement agencies erred or might improve their work. They recommended a closer look at the process of securing warrants to conduct surveillance on individuals, as well as how much detail investigators are required to provide the secret court that approves such warrants about “informant or source issues and the divulging of bias information.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, has said he plans to take up this issue.