



As close associates of Donald Trump are questioned as part of congressional investigations into Russia’s election interference, House Republicans announced two inquiries looking back at the Obama administration, including the renewed examination of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The announcements on Tuesday, coming amid private interviews with the president’s personal lawyer and his former campaign digital director, appear aimed at diverting attention away from congressional investigations into potential coordination between the Kremlin and associates of the Trump campaign.

The Republican leaders of the House judiciary and oversight panels said in a statement they were opening investigations into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation and the decision not to prosecute her – the subject of hours-long congressional hearings last year. The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Devin Nunes, also announced a separate investigation into a uranium deal brokered during Barack Obama’s tenure as president.

The House judiciary committee chairman, Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, and the oversight committee chairman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said the inquiry would be aimed at the FBI and its decisions in the Clinton investigation. The ousted FBI director James Comey and the former attorney general Loretta Lynch spoke at length to Congress about that investigation last year, and it is the subject of a continuing review by the justice department’s inspector general. The two panels have declined to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, leaving those inquiries to Senate committees and the House intelligence committee.

Nunes has separately signed off on subpoenas that sought the banking records of Fusion GPS, the political research company behind a dossier of allegations about Trump’s connections to Russia. A lawyer for the company said in a statement Tuesday the subpoena was “overly broad” and without any legitimate purposes.

