Two announcements out of the House of Representatives today.

First:

The chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees announced on Tuesday a joint investigation into how the FBI handled last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s private email server.

“Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a joint statement.

The two Republican leaders said they have questions about the FBI’s decision to openly declare the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information, while quietly investigating Trump campaign associates.

They are also interested to know why the FBI decided to formally notify Congress of the probe on two separate occasions; why the FBI — rather than the Justice Department — recommended that Clinton not be charged after the investigation concluded; and the reasoning behind their timeline for announcing such decisions.

“The Committees will review these decisions and others to better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn. Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions taken,” their statement continued.

Gowdy and Goodlatte announce probe into 2016 decisionmaking at DOJ pic.twitter.com/t3slElcnm0

— Ben Pershing (@benpershing) October 24, 2017

This is long overdue. Nothing will come of it in regards to criminal charges though the fix was obviously in from Day One to ensure that neither Hillary Clinton nor her inner circle would be damaged during the 2016 campaign. (If you seriously believe that Comey’s investigations, either of them, had a negative impact on the Clinton campaign you are delusional.) The only good thing to come of this could be to expose Clinton loyalists in Justice and the FBI and perhaps see them removed from their duties.

Second:

The two panels, the House Intelligence and Oversight and Government Reform Committees, will first probe whether there was an FBI investigation into the deal, approved when former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was secretary of State.

Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) on Monday cited “very, very real concerns about why we would allow a Russian-owned company to get access to 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.”

“It’s important we find out why that deal went through,” he said.

A confidential informant has come forward to the committees, according to Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), and the two panels are currently in discussions with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release that individual from a nondisclosure agreement.

This latter story seems closely linked to the first. In both cases, Hillary Clinton was shown preferential treatment by Department of Justice in their limiting the scope of their inquiry to not include obvious pay-to-play activities by the Clinton Foundation and personal enrichment of the Clinton family bank account. What makes this so interesting is that Robert Mueller was the FBI director during the investigation, though James Comey was director in the last year or so, Rod Rosentein was the US attorney prosecuting the case, and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who was heavily mired in the email investigation, personally ran the investigation. They are particularly interested in why the Congress was never informed of the investigation and why Justice and the FBI seem to have actively tried to prevent Congress from learning about it.

Both of these investigations are long overdue and as the linchpin is Trey Gowdy, who is involved in both, we can have some hopes of having answers if not retribution.