There are two House Republican chairmen tasked with possibly investigating President Trump. One of them — Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.) — messed it up so badly that he had to step aside. And now the other is retiring from Congress.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz's retirement announcement Wednesday came as a surprise. Talk quickly turned to whether it was because liberals successfully berated him at town hall meetings, whether he feared a well-funded opponent in 2018, and/or whether he was just trying to get a head start on the 2020 Utah governor's race.
The last of these makes complete sense, as The Fix's Amber Phillips notes. But the first feeds into an emerging reality of 2017: Trump is giving the people charged with investigating him fits.
Because Republicans are in the majority, those people happen to be fellow Republicans. And that's creating some impossible choices.
Through Trump's reluctance to quash potential conflicts of interest and his penchant for making wild accusations and then pawning them off on investigators, jobs such as Chaffetz's House Oversight Committee chairmanship have become completely thankless. Less than three months into the Trump administration, Chaffetz was forced to repeatedly shrug off Democrats and watchdogs' calls for him to investigate Trump's possible conflicts of interest. He also had to answer for Trump's allegation that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election. He was even pressed to investigate Nunes's conduct, which led the House Intelligence Committee chairman to hand off his Russia investigation.
The only investigation Chaffetz has actually leaned into, it turns out, was the one Trump really wanted him to: rooting out leaks in the federal government.
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