Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., accused Republicans on Tuesday of trying to downplay last week’s shooting of five Dallas police officers and other shootings around the country, by using a hearing with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“The security of the people and their safety […] is not important,” Gutierrez said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, referencing the Orlando massacre and Dallas shooting. “What’s important? Let’s go talk about the emails once again.”
Gutierrez said he instead wants to talk about “safety, and regaining the trust that the American people need to have in their law enforcement” following the deaths of black men at the hand of police.
“Instead of talking about, as they refer to her, ‘Hillary,'” he said. “Because that’s what they [the GOP] want to do, minimize this.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, responded at the hearing by saying Gutierrez’s remarks were an “outrage.”
“To say the death of five police officers […] and that we on this side of the aisle think that’s not important is an outrage,” Gomhert said. “It is simply an outrage.”
“I won’t say that actually if my colleague had his way, then everybody would be as disarmed around the country as they are in Chicago and in Washington, D.C., and we would be losing thousands more of precious black lives in America,” he added.
Gomhert countered that Tuesday’s hearing was being held just after the five officers were killed, and said, “it is a huge deal to me.”
Republicans mostly used the hearing to ask Lynch about the Clinton email case, while Democrats used it to ask about gun violence.
