House GOP starts probes on key political issues as 2016 race heats up

WASHINGTON — The 2016 presidential campaign is apparently going to play out in part in Congress, as House Republicans are gearing up three new probes on topics likely to be high on the party's campaign agenda: abortion, President Obama's executive orders and Hillary Clinton's emails.

The House Science panel issued letters last week to companies that provided technical services for Clinton's privately owned email server, beginning a probe of whether her email system complied with federal standards for government email security. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, has repeatedly said he does not plan on pursuing Clinton's unusual email arrangement. Science Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, appears prepared to take on that task.

"Understanding these companies’ roles in providing software and services to maintain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server is critical to improving government cybersecurity standards," Smith said. "A high profile government official deviating from established information security requirements raises significant concerns. The sensitive nature of the information stored on Sec. Clinton’s private server created a unique challenge to ensure all of the information was properly safeguarded."

Smith's letter's came two days after House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., announced a new task force to hold a six-month investigation of "executive overreach." His announcement described the task force as a response to "the historic breakdown of the separation of powers and checks and balances that has led to the unprecedented increase in presidential power and executive overreach."

Rep. Steve King, who will chair the task force, told Paste BN, "the president has scooped power into the White House that was designed constitutionally for the United States Congress. Article I (which outlines Congressional authority) has been rendered significantly less powerful under the Obama presidency — but it has been going on for a long time." King said Republican presidents are not blameless, nor is a Republican Congress that has failed to stop the trend.

The House is also just getting around to organizing the new Energy and Commerce subcommittee created last year to investigate abortion practices in the wake of undercover videos released last year that suggested Planned Parenthood was profiting from the sale of fetal tissue from abortions. The group has denied the charge. The "Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives," chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, has begin hiring staff but has not yet held its first meeting.

Democrats say the investigations are part of a GOP effort to use the House to elevate Republican campaign themes.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, the top Democrat on the Science committee, called the panel's new email probe part of "an election-year partisan agenda. While couched in the verbiage of pursuing legitimate Committee oversight, it is clear that this latest ‘oversight’ is nothing less than a transparent attempt to score political points, effectively turning the Committee into little more than an arm of the Republican National Committee."

Brendan Buck, spokesman for Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., rejected that the probes have any political motivation, noting that they grow out of long-standing Republican oversight priorities. “I guess the paranoia of a right wing conspiracy never dies," Buck said. "Effective oversight has been a hallmark of the GOP majority for five years now, and we’re not going to stop holding the administration accountable just because an election is approaching."