Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz has only been in Congress for eight years, but the Tea Party Republican quickly made a name for himself. As a former candidate for speaker of the House and the current chair of the House Oversight Committee — the main investigative committee for the House of Representatives — Chaffetz has an abnormally large megaphone for a four-term congressman.

Now, Chaffetz is once again making headlines — this time for refusing to look into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian government prior to President Donald Trump’s election and swearing-in as president. Still, putting partisanship over national security shouldn’t surprise anyone following Chaffetz’s congressional career. Here are 10 other times Chaffetz has embarrassed himself in order to score political points.

1. When he waxed poetic about stopping same-sex couples from getting married.

Before marriage equality was a Supreme Court-sanctioned reality, it was a spotty, state-by-state affair, and one of Chaffetz’s first moves in Congress was to try to block the District of Columbia from allowing it within the city, even though the democratically elected city council supported it. “Some things are worth fighting for, and this is one of them,” Chaffetz announced in 2009 in his role as the head of a committee that oversaw the District. "It's not something I can let go softly into the night. ... I recognize the Democrats are in the majority, but I represent the majority of Americans on this issue.” Even after a marriage equality bill was signed by the D.C. mayor, Chaffetz proposed a bill that would block legal marriage for same-sex couples in the District until it could be put up for a citywide vote.

2. When he opened up the idea of impeaching President Barack Obama over Benghazi.

When the GOP was desperately trying to drum up outrage over the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya — and the death of four Americans that they placed solely in the lap of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — Chaffetz escalated the issue by claiming perhaps President Obama should be impeached over the incident. "It's certainly a possibility," he suggested, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. "That's not the goal but given the continued lies perpetrated by this administration, I don't know where it's going to go. ... I'm not taking it off the table.” Chaffetz even traveled to Libya himself to “investigate” the matter, and then, ironically, accused Obama of being the one trying to “politicize” the terrorist incident. The real motivation of the relentless Benghazi hearings eventually came out in 2015, when Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted that they continued investigating in order to damage Clinton’s upcoming presidential run.

3. When he accidentally publicly identified a CIA training camp.

Speaking of Benghazi hearings, it was Chaffetz himself who appeared to be accidentally dropping classified info as he loudly announced to the rest of the panel that a picture being shown to them by State Department officials of U.S. facilities in Libya was actually a photo of a CIA training camp for Americans. “I totally object to the use of that photo,” Chaffetz shouted, according to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, adding, “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here today.”

Milbank noted that by trying to smear the Obama administration by holding the Benghazi hearings in the first place, Chaffetz and his crew likely undermined national security on their own instead. “Republicans were aiming to embarrass the Obama administration over State Department security lapses,” he wrote. “But they inadvertently caused a different picture to emerge than the one that has been publicly known: that the victims may have been let down not by the State Department but by the CIA. If the CIA was playing such a major role in these events, which was the unmistakable impression left by Wednesday’s hearing, having a televised probe of the matter was absurd.”

4. When he used a completely misleading chart to attack Planned Parenthood during a politically motivated “investigative hearing.”

Even Chaffetz himself eventually admitted that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Planned Parenthood organization, despite his five-hour-long grilling of the entity over its financing and whether it was “profiting” by receiving reimbursement from tissue procurement organizations for its handling and transport of fetal tissue. But the most embarrassing portion of the hearing came when it was discovered Chaffetz used a misleading chart created by the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life to try to claim that the number of abortions it provided had skyrocketed while their other services plummeted. Data experts condemned the visual manipulation and Chaffetz got a “pants on fire” rating from political fact-checking site Polifact.

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5. When he planned “years” of Hillary Clinton investigations, assuming she’d win the presidency.

At one point, it was assumed by most pollsters that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would not just win the popular vote, but the electoral college as well, securing her victory on Election Day. To prepare for the Clinton administration, Chaffetz vowed there would be years of Clinton investigations to slow down her governing. “It’s a target-rich environment,” the Washington Post quotes him saying. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.” When Election Day came and went, and Clinton lost, he still claimed he’d continue badgering her over her email server and donations to the Clinton Foundation — despite the fact that then-President-elect Trump was already indicating he had no interest in divesting himself from his own business entities or other conflicts of interest.

6. When he couldn’t stop talking about how offensive Trump was — but then said he would vote for him anyway.

Chaffetz wasn’t an early supporter of Donald Trump for president, and he declared himself completely done in October, after the exposé about Trump’s lewd and sexually inappropriate Access Hollywood comments became public knowledge. “I’m out,” he said in early October. “I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine … My wife and I, we have a 15-year-old daughter, and if I can’t look her in the eye and tell her these things, I can’t endorse this person." Less than three weeks later, he publicly stated he’d vote for Trump anyway — although he claimed that somehow that still wasn’t endorsing him. “[Hillary Clinton] is just that bad,” he claimed, justifying his stance.

7. When he posted a chummy screenshot of himself and Hillary Clinton on his Instagram account just so he could tear her down in his comments.

On the day of Trump’s inauguration, Chaffetz posted a screen shot on his Instagram account of himself collegially shaking Clinton’s hand during the inaugural proceedings. Then he captioned it, “So pleased she is not the President. I thanked her for her service and wished her luck. The investigation continues.” Commenters were appalled by his lack of decorum. “How disgusting to open your hand in friendship and then slap her behind her back on social media,” one wrote.

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8. When he claimed people were being paid to come to his town hall and “bully” him.

The Tea Party swept into power after a series of 2009 town halls where they swarmed Democratic lawmakers and demanded they oppose Obamacare. Now that the GOP is on the receiving side of the crowd, however, Chaffetz is convinced everyone there are paid activists coming to “intimidate” him.

"Absolutely. I know there were," he told the Deseret News, saying the crowd at his Feb. 9 appearance had been "more of a paid attempt to bully and intimidate" than a meeting of his constituents. According to the news site, he added that he will likely limit open public appearances because he doesn’t want to provide a venue “for these radicals to further intimidate."

9. When he announced a federal probe into “Sid the Science Kid.”

At the same town hall, Chaffetz also refused to answer a 10-year-old girl who asked point-blank, “Do you believe in science? Because I do.” But that’s not the only “science kid” he’s lashed out at. Just two weeks earlier, he unveiled a plan to probe PBS cartoon character Sid the Science Kid under the guise of taxpayer waste. According to the Washington Post, “On Jan. 26, the day after TMZ reported that the CDC was planning a Zika-education partnership with Sid, Chaffetz fired off a letter to acting CDC director Anne Schuchat, demanding a ‘written explanation’ and ‘communications between CDC and the Jim Henson Company and also PBS.’”

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10. When he said he wouldn’t investigate the Trump administration’s ties to Russia — but he would investigate who was leaking insider White House information instead.

Chaffetz has been adamant about not looking into the Trump administration’s Russia ties after the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, stating that the matter is “taking care of itself.” But he does have another investigation he’s itching to start — finding out who in the White House is leaking information to reporters. "We request that your office begin an immediate investigation into whether classified information was mishandled here," he and fellow GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte wrote in a joint letter to the inspector general. As Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings notes, “Chairman Chaffetz appears to be taking his marching orders directly from President Trump’s tweet yesterday,” referring to a Twitter message from the president stating the real scandal in Washington is that people keep giving information to reporters. Cummings accused Chaffetz of “running interference” for the president.

11. When he told people to skip buying an iPhone to buy health insurance.

As House Republicans finally introduced their new health-care plan for replacing the Affordable Care Act, Chaffetz hit the media as a spokesperson for the new and instantly unpopular bill. Trying to downplay one of the biggest criticisms of the GOP's new American Health Care Act — that the subsidies that helped people purchase insurance plans were being reduced to the point where insurance may again be unaffordable — Chaffetz countered that maybe people should just better allocate their money if they really want insurance coverage. "[M]aybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest it in their own health care," he told a CNN reporter.

Of course, even a top-line cell phone with no plan or trade-in is only $600 or $700, and lasts a year or two. That means that skipping a phone would save a person about $25 to $60 a month. Many Americans would be more than happy to spend that little a month on health-care premiums. And in some cases they could, under Obamacare, which the GOP is now dismantling with Chaffetz's help.

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