McConnell: Senate Probes Of Obama Are Just Payback For Trump

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday that because the House of Representatives is still doing oversight into Donald Trump and his administration, it should be able to conduct investigations into the Obama administration and the Bidens.

"The House of Representatives is arguing before the Supreme Court that they are still looking for yet another impeachment. They are arguing that before the Supreme Court this week," McConnell (R-KY) told Fox News, referencing a legal filing in which the House sought access to grand jury testimony from the Robert Mueller investigation.

McConnell called Senate investigations into the prosecution of retired General Michael Flynn, the origins of the Russia probe, and former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden's business dealings "a legitimate oversight responsibility for the Senate."

"If the house can spend time on a baseless impeachment effort then we should at least have oversight over what happened to initiate this whole process a couple of years ago," McConnell argued.

McConnell was responding to criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the Senate Homeland Security Committee's party-line vote to issue a subpoena in its investigation of Hunter Biden while his father is the presumed Democratic candidate for president. Pelosi (D-CA) called the move "a clear act of retaliation and political retribution intended to help the President keep his job," in a Wednesday press release.

Senate Republicans have been complaining for months that impeachment of Trump was a waste of time and that House oversight of the Trump administration was "pure harassment." In a floor speech on Wednesday, McConnell charged that Democrats were "fishing" for dirt on Trump with "perpetual investigation and perpetual impeachment."

When they voted to acquit Trump in the Senate trial in February, Republicans vowed to get back to work and focus on public policy.

"With the impeachment trial behind us, the Senate can now get back to the business of the American people," McConnell declared.

But instead, Senate Republicans are channeling their energy into a series of investigations into Obama-era controversies. These include probes of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails, the Bidens' Ukraine ties, and the beginnings of investigations into the Trump campaign's Russia ties. The Obama administration left office in January 2017.

In March, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) admitted that the probe into the Bidens "appears political" and "would better be handled by "the FBI or some other agency that's not as political as, perhaps, a committee of our body." Still, he joined with his GOP colleagues on Wednesday in voting to issue the subpoena.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.