Monday, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) went on CNN’s “New Day” and said that “it certainly looked like obstruction of justice” when President Donald Trump fired former FBI Director Jim Comey while the FBI was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Deutch said House Democrats are going to “focus like a laser” on probes into obstruction of justice and corruption.
“[T]here are a whole range of issues that we’re going to be asking about,” Deutch told host John Berman. “We know that on the issue of obstruction of justice we know that it certainly looked like obstruction of justice when the president fired Jim Comey, asked him to go easy on Flynn; it looked like obstruction of justice when the president allegedly reached out to the former acting attorney general to ask if the southern district of New York U.S. attorney could unrecuse himself so he might get more favorable treatment.”
He continued, “We know the issues about the potential corruption and the president enriching himself while he’s president, a violation of the emoluments clause by having foreign governments spend to enrich the president. In all of these issues, the people who are closest to him have information about what the president was actually doing. That’s why it’s so important for us to reach out to them. I’m just going to say this, John, we’ve, throughout this entire process for two years, the Republican leadership of the Judiciary Committee has done everything they can to try to shift attention away from everything the president is doing. We are now going to focus like a laser on all of these areas — that’s why we’re reaching out and that’s why we’re starting with these requests to 60 people.”
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