After they blew off his first request, Jason Chaffetz asks FBI again for Comey documents

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

After the FBI rejected a request by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, for documents having to do with former FBI Director James Comey and his dealings with the White House, Chaffetz is giving the bureau a new deadline to get him the material.

"Congress does not conduct criminal or counterintelligence investigations; rather Congress' power of inquiry is rooted in part in its duty to oversee the executive branch's faithful enforcement of the laws that Congress enacted," Chaffetz wrote in a letter to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. "In this case, the focus of the committee's investigation is the independence of the FBI, including conversations between the president and Comey and the process by which Comey was removed from his role as director." Chaffetz and the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), asked for the records last week, setting a May 24 deadline.

That deadline came and went, and on Thursday, the assistant director for the FBI's Office of Congressional Affairs, Gregory Brower, wrote Chaffetz that the bureau would not be handing over the documents due to the appointment last week of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel. In his letter to McCabe, Chaffetz said that the appointment of a special counsel does not interfere with congressional investigations into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election, The Hill reports. In this second request, Chaffetz is asking for "documents that are outside the scope of the special counsel's investigation," going back to Sept. 4, 2013.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.