House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) responded to the FBI’s deferral of his request for documents that fired FBI Director James Comey reportedly wrote about his interactions with President Donald Trump by sending a second request.
“The focus of the Committee’s investigation is the independence of the FBI,” Chaffetz wrote Thursday in a letter to acting FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe. “The records being withheld are central to those questions.”
He said the House Oversight Committee “in no way wants to impede or interfere with the Special Counsel’s ability to conduct his investigation” but asked the FBI to “produce these documents to the Committee immediately.”
In its response to Chaffetz’s original request, the FBI cited the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the investigation into whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials.
“In light of this development and other considerations, we are undertaking appropriate consultation to ensure all relevant interests implicated by your report are properly evaluated,” Gregory A. Brower, the assistant director for the bureau’s Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote in a letter to Chaffetz.
The New York Times reported last week that Comey wrote contemporaneous memos documenting his conversations with Trump, including one where the President reportedly asked him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
At the time, Chaffetz said he had his “subpoena pen” ready to “get the Comey memo, if it exists.”
Two days later, however, he questioned whether the documents are “actually there.”
On Wednesday, Chaffetz said Comey refused to tell him the location of those memos during a one-on-one conversation.
“He would not confirm where they are, what their presence — if there is a presence of these documents, he would not say a word about that,” Chaffetz said. “I’m skeptical and want to see them ourselves.”