Trey Gowdy targeting James Comey in new Clinton probe

Rep. Trey Gowdy plans to grill former FBI Director James Comey about his decision-making as part of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's decision to re-examine the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

"Have to, won't we?" the South Carolina Republican told the Washington Examinerwhen asked about interviewing Comey.

Gowdy chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has opened a joint investigation with the Judiciary Committee in order to review the Justice Department's handling of the politically charged investigation. Gowdy is particularly concerned that "the decision to charge or not charge [Clinton] was made before all the witnesses were interviewed," but he emphasized that the investigation topics are structured in a nonpartisan way.

"Of the six things we listed with specificity, three of them are things Democrats gave a big damn about last fall," said Gowdy. "So, the question is, do they still? And three of them are things that Republicans cared about a lot last year, and the question is, do they still?"

The committees announced the investigation Tuesday morning, with an emphasis on Comey and why the FBI decided what information to reveal and when. Questions include whether the FBI made the right decision to say in public that Clinton's team was "extremely careless" in its handling of classified information, which Democratic critics protested was a breach of DOJ protocol. But the committee will also ask about the parallel refusal to confirm during the campaign that some of President Trump's campaign associates faced investigations over their apparent ties to Russia.