Jeff Sessions raises prospect of special counsel on Republican concerns

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is leaving open the possibility that a special counsel could be appointed to look into Clinton Foundation dealings and an Obama-era uranium deal, the Justice Department said Monday.

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, which is holding an oversight hearing Tuesday, the Justice Department said Sessions had directed senior federal prosecutors to "evaluate certain issues" recently raised by Republican lawmakers.

The prosecutors will report to Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and recommend whether any new investigations should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require additional resources and whether it might be necessary to appoint a special counsel to oversee a probe, according to a letter sent to Rep. Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, the Judiciary Committee's Republican chairman.

The letter from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd did not say what specific steps might be taken by the Justice Department to address the lawmakers' concerns, or whether any of the matters Republicans have seized on might already be under investigation.

Any appointment of a new special counsel, particularly in response to calls from members of Congress, is likely to lead to Democratic complaints about an undue political influence on the department's decision-making. But Boyd said in the letter that the department "will never evaluate any matter except on the facts and the law."

Sessions said at his January confirmation hearing that he would recuse himself from any investigations involving Democrat Hillary Clinton given his role as a vocal campaign surrogate to President Donald Trump. He similarly recused himself from a separate investigation into potential co-ordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, and in May, the Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead that probe.

House Republicans in recent weeks have launched their own probes into the Obama administration and Clinton's emails.

Some have specifically said they want to know more about whether Obama's Department of Justice was investigating the purchase of Canadian mining company Uranium One by Rosatom, Russia's state-owned nuclear company, in 2010. The agreement was reached while Clinton led the State Department and some investors in the company had relationships with former president Bill Clinton and had donated large sums to the Clinton Foundation.

The letter comes one day before Sessions is to appear before the Judiciary panel for a Justice Department oversight hearing. Democrats on the committee have already signalled that they intend to press Sessions on his knowledge of contacts between Russians and aides to the Trump campaign.