The committee, in a statement released Friday by Grassley and Graham, cited an April story by The New York Times reporting that the FBI came into possession of a batch of hacked documents, including one authored by a "Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far." After reading that story, Grassley requested a copy of the document from the Justice Department, which he said never responded.

A month later, The Washington Post reported that the email had been sent by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., in her former role as the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundation, an international grantmaking network founded by Democratic mega-donor and businessman George Soros. That email, according to the Post, indicated that Lynch had privately assured Clinton campaign staffer Amanda Renteria that the FBI's investigation wouldn't "go too far."