As Republicans ramp up their investigation into the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe, some Democrats are suggesting it's an effort to distract from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said it's just the opposite: the "anti-Trump Russia investigation" is designed to distract from Clinton's national security crimes and the subsequent "cover-up" by the Obama Justice Department and FBI.

"It's never been about Russia. It's been about protecting Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration's misconduct in protecting her," Fitton said on "Outnumbered Overtime" on Friday.

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Three FBI officials are set to testify before Congress on the handling of the investigation into Clinton's private email server.

The House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees will reportedly interview Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division; Michael Steinbach, formerly head of the agency’s national security division; and Steinbach’s predecessor, John Giacalone, next month.

Priestap is said to have helped decide to call Clinton’s decisions "extremely careless" and supervised agent Peter Strzok, who was later found to have been sending anti-Trump text messages to a female colleague with whom he was romantically involved.

Fitton said Judicial Watch doesn't rely on the DOJ inspector general's report or congressional committees, and that's why they're pursuing their own litigation and investigation.

"We want to know if the FBI's decision-making was impacted by politics, as we suspect," Fitton said. "There's no rhyme or reason to the effort to exonerate Hillary Clinton other than they wanted to protect someone who was a candidate for president of the party that was running the administration at the time."

Watch the interview above.

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