WASHINGTON, D.C. – Outgoing Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is confident there will be a smooth transition between him and his successor on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He’s spending a great deal of time with Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, who will take over as committee chair.
In the meantime, Chaffetz says he’s pleased with the work his office was able to do.
If you ever turned on the cable news networks, you probably saw Chaffetz either being interviewed or questioning high ranking members of the federal government.
“If you look at the big scandals in Washington, D.C., over the last eight years, we’ve, pretty much, been in the thick of all of them,” he says. “I think the work we did into the Benghazi attacks, the Hillary Clinton emails, Fast and Furious, the United States Secret Service… there are a lot of things that I know that we did that really made a difference.”
However, along with the highlights, Chaffetz feels there were some lowlights. He says D.C. is still an extremely secretive city, where government agencies will do what they can to keep facts from being revealed.
“I think this ‘deep state,’ if you will, is very real. I think they protect their own and they don’t want embarrassing documents out,” Chaffetz says.
For instance, he had the authority to issue a subpoena, but he had to go through the Department of Justice to have it enforced, and the DOJ wouldn’t always have a vested interest in enforcing that subpoena. He claims there are several government agencies that won’t really comply with a subpoena.
“The worst offenders are the Department of State, the Department of Justice and the Pentagon. These are massive bureaucracies,” Chaffetz asserts.
He also refutes claims that he would avoid investigating members of his own party, calling them “hogwash.”
“[We investigated] their mishandling of classified information at Mar a Lago. We dove into the Trump Hotel issue.”
(Photo Credit: Spenser Heaps, Deseret News)