Paul Ryan On The Hugh Hewitt Show

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Hugh Hewitt Blog:

Hugh Hewitt

September 8, 2016

 

 

Audio

 

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HH: On Tuesday of this week, September 6th, the House Chairman of Oversight and Governmental Affairs, Jason Chaffetz, sent a letter to the CEO of Platte River Networks. And it referenced a March 25th, very mysterious meeting which Mr. Chaffetz says Secretary Clinton’s team, including attorneys David Kendall and Cheryl Mills, held a conference call with the Platte River Network engineer who maintained Secretary Clinton’s server. In subsequent interviews with the FBI, the PRN engineer refused to answer questions about that call, asserting either a 5th Amendment or Attorney-client privilege. The Chairman then writes, “This timeline of events raises questions as to whether the PRN engineer violated federal statutes that prohibit destruction of evidence, and obstruction of a Congressional investigation, among others, when the engineer erased Secretary Clinton’s email contrary to Congressional preservation orders and a subpoena. The sequence of events leading up to the destruction of Secretary Clinton’s emails, the conference call, the work ticket, the use of BleachBit, and PRN’s subsequent refusal to discuss a conference call with the FBI, raises questions about whether Secretary Clinton acting through her attorneys instructed PRN to destroy records relevant to the ongoing Congressional investigation.” Are you concerned, Speaker Ryan, that the House is being denied its Constitutional oversight by an FBI that is indifferent to what is obviously an obstruction of justice?

 

PR: Yes, and it’s not the first time we’ve experienced this. I was part of the IRS investigation in my last job here in Congress, and I would say it’s a very, very similar story. It’s a story of stonewalling. The reason we know about these things is because of our investigation, our oversight. Jason Chaffetz is doing a great job. You know all of these things that you just discussed because of our oversight. But as we do this oversight, we see more obfuscation. We see more misleading. We see that the claims that were made, you know, six months, a year ago, about servers and emails and devices are now, were false when they were made, knowingly false. So we clearly see that she’s not being truthful. We clearly see, and also with our investigations, you see the Clinton Foundation and all what I would call the pay to play, just basically the stink of corruption surrounding that. So this is not a new story, unfortunately, with the Clintons. But it’s an ongoing one, and that is, to me, very alarming. One of the things we’re doing, we’re walking and chewing gum at the same time. We’re doing our oversight to try and bring truth to power, to try and uncover these things so that people don’t live above the law. And we’re offering a better way. We’re offering an agenda of how we would fix these problems. But more fundamental, I do believe, because you said in the first part of your point, I’m the officer of the Constitution here, preserver of Article I, if you go to our Better Way Agenda, and go to www.better.gop, you will see that item number three and four is a specific plan to resuscitate the separation of powers, and reclaim our Article I powers of the Constitution, because the other branches of government have overstepped their boundaries. And they’re all kicking their coverage, if we’re going to go back to Aaron Rodgers and football metaphors. And we have a very specific plan for getting Article I back so that we restore the principle of self-government and an accountable government.

 

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