House Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy in­dic­ated Monday that a long­time House chair­man over­stepped his jur­is­dic­tion when he launched an in­vest­ig­a­tion in­to former Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton’s private email serv­er last month.

Sci­ence, Space, and Tech­no­logy Chair­man Lamar Smith is prob­ing wheth­er private con­tract­ors who set up Clin­ton’s serv­er at her New York home fol­lowed fed­er­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity guidelines. But Mc­Carthy said he be­lieves the mat­ter to be un­der the pur­view of Rep. Trey Gowdy’s Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi.

“I have the same im­pres­sion as you, that it would be Gowdy’s jur­is­dic­tion,” Mc­Carthy said, de­clin­ing to an­swer wheth­er Smith had pre-cleared the in­vest­ig­a­tion with lead­er­ship.

Smith’s of­fice also de­clined to an­swer wheth­er he no­ti­fied party lead­ers be­fore send­ing let­ters ask­ing for more in­form­a­tion to four private com­pan­ies that helped set up the Chap­paqua, New York serv­er. But Smith spokes­man Zachary Kurz said the chair­man is fol­low­ing up on a cy­ber­se­cur­ity hear­ing he held last month.

“Dur­ing the hear­ing, the chair­man had an ex­change with a private-sec­tor wit­ness who stated un­equi­voc­ally that a fed­er­al of­fi­cial us­ing a private serv­er and email ad­dress as her of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment email risked ex­pos­ing clas­si­fied data and that his com­pany wouldn’t do it be­cause of fed­er­al laws and cy­ber­se­cur­ity guidelines,” Kurz said. “Based on that testi­mony, the chair­man de­term­ined that fur­ther over­sight was ne­ces­sary.”

Smith is fa­cing a primary chal­lenge this fall from a tea-party-backed chal­lenger, Matt Mc­Call, who failed to un­seat him last year. The Cook Polit­ic­al Re­port rates the dis­trict an R+12, mean­ing it is solidly Re­pub­lic­an. The Texas del­eg­a­tion was shaken last year when 17-term Rep. Ral­ph Hall sur­pris­ingly lost his primary elec­tion in a run­off to former U.S. At­tor­ney John Ratcliffe.