Washington • For a onetime BYU placekicker, Jason Chaffetz's foot has been a drag.
The Utah Republican, who departs Congress on Friday, just six months into his two-year elected term, shattered his right foot in 2005 after falling off a ladder in his garage. Several surgeries and 14 screws later, he was hobbling his way back to the governor's office, where he would soon leave his post as chief of staff — his rehabilitation providing cover for a resignation that wasn't wholly voluntary.
Now Chaffetz is leaving his congressional seat after another surgery on that old foot injury as he eyes a new venture, possibly as a pundit on cable news and perhaps a 2020 bid for governor.
"I didn't come here to ride the back bench and get a fancy business card," the California native and onetime Democrat says about his time in office.
Chaffetz's political career has been marked by opportunistic moves that have propelled him from a relatively unknown multilevel-marketing executive to heading Congress' most powerful investigative committee.
Along the way, he earned enemies and friends; prompted the resignations, demotions or retirements of nearly two dozen government officials; failed in a bid to lead the House; and was soundly mocked for his inability to draw a chart.
Secret Service officials leaked his 2003 rejected application to join the agency. He tangled with the Transportation Security Administration. He'll forever be linked to investigations into the Benghazi attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails.
Above all, Chaffetz proved to be a politician with media savvy, using the power of TV appearances to boost his standing. He gave reporters his cellphone number and didn't hesitate to call journalists to shoot the breeze; spent his freshman year chronicling his life for CNN; and leg-wrestled comedian Stephen Colbert, losing twice. At one point, Chaffetz even blind taste-tested various burgers for a Roll Call piece on a new hamburger vending machine.
"This is disgusting; don't eat it," proclaimed Chaffetz, a self-described burger aficionado.
The media attention worked to his advantage for the most part, helping to earn him the coveted Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairmanship and cementing his reputation as a go-to GOP message machine.
"There was a time when placing a priority on being a media figure was frowned upon, [given the] old traditions of being a workhorse vs. show horse," says Joe Hunter, who was chief of staff to then-Rep. Chris Cannon, whom Chaffetz bulldozed on his way to Congress. "But, let's be honest, in today's political and media environment, that is an important role. ... It was his role to play, and he played it well. He was a good messenger."
Chaffetz burst into Congress as a conservative firebrand, tacking to the right of many members of his own party. As he departs, he leaves behind a legacy of a dogged investigator — at least of President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, certainly not of President Donald Trump — but also someone who, despite sometimes infuriating Democrats, made some friends across the aisle.
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New ventures • On a recent workday, Chaffetz strolled into his office where knickknacks were already packed to send back to Utah and more cardboard boxes awaited filling. A binder of materials lay on Chaffetz's desk, the remnants of ongoing investigations he had started but won't finish.
The five-term Utah congressman says he's leaving for a few reasons: He's tired of sleeping on a cot, spending so much time traveling and away from his wife, Julie. He also noted his frustration with the Trump administration, which he says hasn't been as forthcoming with document requests as he'd hoped with a Republican in the White House.
He bristles at the idea that he's resigning from Congress because he doesn't want to investigate a president of his own party, but the facts speak for themselves. Of the 39 hearings Chaffetz's Oversight Committee has held this year, none has been about Trump's possible conflicts of interest or ethical questions.
Chaffetz left the probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election to the House Intelligence Committee, though he did start initial reviews into the Trump Hotel's lease with the government, referred a possible violation of the law by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to the Army and asked for any memos fired FBI Director James Comey wrote about his interactions with Obama or Trump.
It is clear Chaffetz never applied the same vigor to Trump-era inquiries that he did when a Democrat occupied the White House.
"Chaffetz persecuted Hillary Clinton for her use of personal email while using a personal email account for official business himself," says Brian Fallon, who was Clinton's national press secretary and now is a senior adviser to the super PAC Priorities USA, referring to a Gmail address Chaffetz had on his business card. "He un-endorsed Donald Trump after the 'Access Hollywood' tape surfaced only to re-endorse Trump weeks later. His blind partisanship and utter lack of principle is exactly what people hate about Washington."
A new group, American Oversight, even sprouted up this year, hoping to take on the watchdog role in light of what organizers say is the lack of it in the Republican-led Congress.
"Aggressive congressional oversight is important no matter which party is in the White House, but, unfortunately, the Jason Chaffetz of 2017 is a mere shadow of his former self," says Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight. "Since Rep. Chaffetz evidently lost interest in conducting oversight once his party took power, he is doing the public a service by leaving his post."
Chaffetz pushed back, arguing that was "patently false" and noting that there are 72 inspectors general for departments and agencies, the Government Accountability Office as well as other congressional committees.
Chaffetz faced similar criticism during a raucous town hall earlier this year, with constituents demanding that he fulfill his duty by probing possible wrongdoing by Trump and his associates.
Chaffetz relinquished his gavel this month to South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor.
Despite criticisms of his partisanship, Chaffetz wins praise from the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who called the Utah Republican a "tenacious and dedicated public servant" who showed sincere interest in what both sides of the aisle cared about on the committee.
"He has fundamentally changed the culture on our committee so members, as he says, can disagree without being disagreeable," Cummings said, adding it was an honor to serve with him.
Chaffetz leaves Washington with a possible TV gig awaiting, as well as a possible 2020 run for governor — "I'm not taking any of that off the table," he says. "I've said it's a definite maybe."
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The rise • Chaffetz remembers the date well: Oct. 31, 2003. Halloween.
Recognizing the star power that Jon Huntsman brought to the governor's race, Chaffetz approached him and asked for a job. He got it, and six months later Huntsman tapped him to run the 2004 campaign.
"I told him I hadn't ever run a campaign like this," Chaffetz says, recalling Huntsman's response as, "That's OK. I've never run for governor before."
Huntsman won and installed Chaffetz as his top aide, though it was not a stint without controversy.
Days after taking office, Chaffetz fired 32 economic development employees, showing them the door and immediately blocking access to their work computers.
As the Utah Legislature began its general session, lawmakers griped that Chaffetz shut down their access to the governor.
A few months later, as Chaffetz slowly recovered from his foot injury, his lingering absence from the office was made permanent.
"In retrospect, it was the right decision for both of us," Chaffetz says now.
Less than two years later, before Rep. Cannon was sworn into his sixth term, Chaffetz announced he was exploring a race against him.
Cannon and David Leavitt, a former Juab County attorney whose brother Mike Leavitt had been elected to three terms as governor, both had plenty of money and name power in the race, but Chaffetz emerged on top after crisscrossing the state to meet with GOP delegates and delivering a fiery convention speech that promised a tough approach to illegal immigration that took a page from Joe Arpaio, then sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz.
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'Cot guy' • Chaffetz, trying to prove himself as a fiscal conservative, said he wouldn't rent an apartment in Washington and would sleep in his office instead, saving himself $1,500 a month or so. News cameras awaited his plane arrival to get video of the congressman-elect carrying a duct-taped cot. He was quickly nicknamed the "cot guy" and relished the attention.
"Without question, he's one of the most available guys," Anne Schroeder Mullins, then a gossip columnist for the D.C. political publication Politico, said at the time. "As a reporter, how can you not love Jason Chaffetz? He's around for a quote, and he's around for a pretty good quote."
Some six years and countless interviews later, Chaffetz was safely in his fourth term when then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, announced his retirement after facing repeated mutinies by conservatives. Then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was the odds-on favorite but Chaffetz jumped in the race as a long shot.
When McCarthy dropped out, it left a two-way contest between Chaffetz and Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida. The media scrum around Chaffetz that day grew so large, he could barely move.
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., eventually entered that race, and won, allowing Chaffetz to keep his Oversight Committee chairmanship, which he continued to use to poke the Obama administration and launch probes of Clinton's use of private email servers. He kept the heat on IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, trying unsuccessfully to impeach him, and grilled Planned Parenthood about the sale of fetal organs and tissue in the wake of edited undercover videos released by conservative muckrakers. At a hearing on the latter issue, Chaffetz showed a misleading chart on Planned Parenthood abortions, prompting a strong rebuke by colleagues and critics.
Under Chaffetz's guidance, the Oversight Committee's website heralded what was essentially a hit list of government officials the panel had brought down.
At one point, he met an informant behind a dumpster at a Goodwill store in rural Virginia, coaxing him to come forward publicly. The job, he notes, wasn't always glamorous.
What does he regret?
"That we couldn't finish a lot of these investigations," he says, singling out Clinton's emails and other long-standing inquiries.
Still, Chaffetz says his scandal investigations were only part of a larger set of achievements while in Congress. He points to passing legislation that transferred ownership of the Y Mountain, securing funds to help remove uranium tailings near the Colorado River in Moab and assisting constituents in more than 1,200 immigration cases
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Hugging the spotlight • Chaffetz won't yet reveal his post-Congress plan, but he snickered when asked if he'd worry about being off the stage.
"I'll still have a spotlight," he said. "I like being in the mix," adding quickly, "Though I've had more than my fair share."
He's rumored to be taking a TV gig, likely with Fox News, and has registered a new company, Strawberry C, that he might use as his own public relations firm, similar to a company he ran before joining Huntsman's team.
On Friday, Chaffetz took his family to the White House to meet the president as a courtesy visit before he leaves Congress. The Utah Republican was sporting specially modified shoes — fixed by a cobbler on Salt Lake City's Foothill Boulevard — to accommodate his still-mending foot surgery.
He said this now-12-year-old injury has changed his life, but it hasn't held him back. He won't let it.
"My foot's been through a lot," he says, noting Brigham Young University's football team never lost a game by the margin of any of his missed kicks. "This paw of mine — look, it's what brought me to Utah."
tburr@sltrib.com
— Editor's note: Jon Huntsman's brother Paul Huntsman is the owner and publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune.
UNITED STATES - MAY 4: Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, fresh off foot surgery, makes his way through Statuary Hall on his way to the House floor in the Capitol for the vote on repeal and replace of Obamacare (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
