House Speaker Paul Ryan said Sunday investigators should open a probe into a deal the Democratic National Committee made during the primaries allowing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wide authority over the committee.
“I don’t know that there’s a legislative remedy on how parties conduct themselves and how they’re supposed to be neutral in primaries,” Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, told “Fox News Sunday” in an interview taped Friday. Democrats are right to be “ticked off” about the deal, he said.
“Whether they broke campaign finance laws should be something that the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, should have to look into, but we don’t legally regulate how the parties set up their bylaws,” Ryan added.
He was responding to an editorial former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Donna Brazile wrote earlier this month outlining the deal that allowed the campaign to take control the DNC’s finances and operations in a manner which she said, “sure looked unethical.”
The piece was a blurb from her new book about the election called “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House,” that takes an in-depth view into Brazile’s experiences as the Democratic Party’s head cheerleader.
Clinton’s agreement was in-keeping with the Clinton’s overall view on politics, Ryan noted.
“We all said the Clintons thought they lived above the rules, but this takes the cake,” he said. “For them to basically be running the DNC in a primary, to see such a deck stacked is really pretty jaw-dropping to me.”
DNC struck a deal with Clinton during the summer of 2015 giving her presidential campaign authority to approve or disapprove DNC hires, according to a memo NBC News obtained Friday night.
Democratic officials also agreed to hire a communications director from “one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA,” according to a memo the NBC obtained Saturday. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s primary Democratic opponent, was given the same opportunity during the election.
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