Jason Chaffetz faces questions as he resigns from Congress

Chaffetz hasn’t said what his next steps will be, though there are rumors that he’s eyeing a job at Fox News.But as the GOP lawmaker prepares to walk away from Capitol Hill after nearly eight years in Congress, it’s hard not to wonder what prompted Chaffetz to change the direction of his career so dramatically. He does, after all, have a powerful post and a high-profile position. Why would a lawmaker start the year raring to go, only to very quickly thereafter decide to quit?It’s possible that family pressures forced the congressman to make personal reevaluations. Maybe Chaffetz was worried a bit about his re-election prospects in the wake of some unpleasant town-hall gatherings in his ruby-red district. Perhaps he’s preparing for a gubernatorial campaign in Utah, and sees value in returning to his home state while putting some distance between himself and an unpopular Congress. It’s also possible he just wants to cash in on his current position.Or maybe Chaffetz, who has the oversight authority to examine Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, saw some evidence that led him to believe the controversy is going to be explosive, and he determined he’d be better off staying as far away from the matter as possible.After all, if Chaffetz stuck around, he’d be under enormous pressure to take the scandal seriously and examine it in detail. And if he held hearings that produced evidence that damaged Trump, there’s no real upside in conservative politics for being a Republican congressman who undermines a Republican president.