Ryan's comments mark a significant departure from House GOP leadership's previous position on Clinton's email issues. | AP Photo Congress House GOP to press Comey for answers on Clinton probe Ryan's statement signals a shift for Republican leadership on the investigation.

House Republicans are gearing up to grill FBI Director James Comey about why the agency chose not to recommend charges for Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified material.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) announced late Tuesday night that he would green-light the chamber's top watchdog, the Oversight Committee, to ask Comey to testify — a significant departure from leadership's previous stance on the issue.


"Comey should give us all the publicly available information to see how and why they reached these conclusions," he told Megyn Kelly on Fox News' "Kelly File."

"Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the Oversight Committee, is going to be calling up James Comey to ask questions. He didn't answer any questions with the press. And our judiciary committee has sent a number of questions. There are a lot of unanswered questions here, Megyn. "

Ryan's comments present a more aggressive stance from House GOP leadership on Clinton's email issues. Ryan — and his predecessor John Boehner (R-Ohio) — had for the past few years kept several of the chamber's panel chairmen, including Chaffetz (R-Utah), from investigating Clinton's tenure at the State Department.

Chaffetz and several other top Republican, including Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce have been itching to probe Clinton's email setup and her compliance with government record keeping rules — but leadership told them to hold off while the FBI completed its investigation.

But on Tuesday, Comey in a surprise press conference said that while Clinton and her staff appeared to violate laws governing classified materials, he found no evidence that they did so knowingly or intentionally. The FBI, Comey said, would not recommend charges.

Ryan said he was surprised by Comey's conclusion, given the issues he laid out in his press conference.

“He basically spent a number of minutes walking through how she not only mishandled classified information, how she was grossly negligent" Ryan said on Fox. "It seemed to me as he was going through his case, it seemed he was going to recommend prosecution, only then he recommended against prosecution. People have been convicted for far less."

Earlier Tuesday, Chaffetz said on Fox News that he wanted to hear from Comey, arguing that now that the FBI has concluded its investigation, there’s no reason Comey couldn’t talk about it with lawmakers.

“Now that it's closed there's no excuse not to provide that information to Congress,” Chaffetz said on TV.

He later elaborated in a brief interview off the House floor Tuesday evening.

“I do think it’s appropriate to hear from the FBI director and the inspectors general,” Chaffetz said, referring to both the intelligence community inspector general that referred the matter to the FBI originally, and State’s watchdog that concluded that Clinton broke rules governing internal email practices.

Chaffetz plans to bring in both, along with Comey.

The hearing may even coming before recess. “Potentially” was all Chaffetz would say when asked if he plans to hold his hearings before lawmakers leave for the long summer break.

“Our days are limited. All you have to do is look at a calendar," he said. “I do think it was the right call to let those investigations play out, but Congress has a role and we have to have a deeper understanding of what happened and what didn’t happen."

Already, a number of senior House Republicans are on board. House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told POLITICO Tuesday that he was readying his panel to retrace the FBI's steps.

“What we’ll do now is go through and look at exactly what was breached, if anything, and what classified information was emailed back and forth to determine whether or not anything has to be changed” legally, he said.

He said he was also confused by Comey's recommendation that no charges be brought.

“More questions have to be asked because I’m not fully understanding this decision," he said. "If one of my staff did this or if I did this, I’d be booted off the intelligence committee and would never hold a security clearance again.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has followed Clinton's email scandal closely, also encouraged Comey to offer more details behind their decision not to recommend charges.

“While Director Comey made it clear that Secretary Clinton and her staff were ‘extremely careless’ in handling classified information, he also recommended no criminal prosecution even though ‘gross negligence regarding classified information is a crime," he said. "If it wants to avoid giving the impression that the FBI was pulling punches, because many people in a similar situation would face some sort of consequence, the agency must now be more transparent than ever in releasing information gathered during its investigation."

Cristiano Lima contributed to this story.