Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the chair of the House Oversight Committee who has pledged to continue investigating Hillary Clinton, said on Thursday that it’s not yet appropriate to investigate Donald Trump.
“I will when there is an allegation of wrongdoing. But he hasn’t even been sworn in yet,” Chaffetz told the Salt Lake Tribune when asked about a letter from Democrats pressuring the GOP congressman to look into Trump’s business conflicts of interest.
“At least let the guy actually become a federal employee before you start screaming for investigations,” Chaffetz added.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Monday sent a letter to Chaffetz, asking for a probe into whether Trump’s business across the world creates an unlawful conflict of interest.
““The scope of Mr. Trump’s conflicts of interest around the world is unprecedented,” they wrote in the letter. “Over the past two weeks, new revelations have raised serious concerns about the intermingling of Mr. Trump’s businesses and his responsibilities as president.”
Chaffetz told the Salt Lake Tribune that he did not investigate Clinton until she took office and so it does not make sense to launch a probe into Trump yet.
“It’s almost silly to suggest the investigation should begin now when he hasn’t even been sworn in,” he said. “I didn’t start an investigation of Hillary Clinton before she was sworn in [as secretary of state]; it was when the inspector general found potential wrongdoing that we started to look into it.”
But he indicated that the Oversight Committee will look into Trump’s actions eventually.
“There will come a point when the Oversight Committee will be probing some things I’m sure the executive branch will not want us to be looking at,” Chaffetz told the Salt Lake Tribune. “It’s happened for 200 years, and it will happen in the Trump administration as well.”
