House Oversight Committee Chairmain Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) responded to questions about President Donald Trump's relationship with Russia on Sunday by asserting that people who leak information about the president should be investigated and jailed.
May 21, 2017

House Oversight Committee Chairmain Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) responded to questions about President Donald Trump's relationship with Russia on Sunday by asserting that people who leak information about the president should be investigated and jailed.

This Week host George Stephanopoulos noted during an interview with Chaffetz that a senior official in the White House was reportedly a person of interest in the investigation into Russia interference in the U.S. election.

Chaffetz, who has announced he is leaving Congress on June 30 for a rumored position at Fox News, said that he was more interested in the person who leaked the news.

"I want to see that this person is prosecuted," the outgoing Utah Republican insisted. "I think the president makes a very good point. No matter who's in the White House, you cannot have the type of leaking of information, sources, methods, classified information. I don't care who it is, Democrat or Republican, you cannot have that happen."

"Not only do you need to wall them off, you probably need to put some handcuffs on them and put them in jail," he added.

"That's for leakers," Stephanopoulos observed. "That's different from the person of interest in this investigation, isn't it?"

"Well, I don't know," Chaffetz replied. "We've got to step back and let the investigators and the FBI and the others do their job. We are not in a position to actually dive in and go individual by individual and do these types of interviews. We've got to let those officials in the Department of Justice do that."

Chaffetz has come under fire for releasing (or perhaps, leaking) a letter from former FBI Director James Comey about the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails just weeks before the 2016 election. The Democratic Coalition Against Trump filed an ethics complaint accusing the congressman of releasing "information that compromised the integrity of the FBI" and "irresponsibly [tweeting] out that the case investigating Secretary Clinton’s emails had been reopened, when in fact it had not been."

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