Trey Gowdy removed any doubt of his hypocrisy this week while questioning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
There were no holds barred when Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and his fellow Republicans were going after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Benghazi. Trey Gowdy and many of those same Republicans are now trying to obstruct or shut down the Russia investigation.
Business Insider reported this week that: “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee about an inspector general report on the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.”
The inspector general report concluded that “senior FBI officials… broke Department of Justice protocol and made serious errors in judgment, how Inspector General Michael Horowitz found no evidence of bias in the decision by the FBI not to recommend charges against Clinton after their lengthy investigation.”
Nevertheless, as Business Insider added: “the report did not focus on the Russia investigation. However, Republicans have seized on its findings to question the legitimacy of the Russia probe and to demand additional sensitive documents about the investigation from the DOJ.
During Thursday’s hearing, Trey Gowdy lectured Deputy AG Rosenstein and Director Wray, telling them to hurry up and conclude the Russia investigation during a hearing on Friday June 29, 2018 stating:
Russia isn’t being hurt by this investigation right now. We are. This country is being hurt by it. … We need to see the evidence. If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury. If you have evidence that this President acted inappropriately, present it to the American people. There’s an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied. I think right now all of us are being denied. Whatever you got, finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart.
And here’s where Gowdy’s mind-numbing hypocrisy comes into play.
As CNN astutely pointed out: “The problem for Gowdy is that his frustration with the length of time Mueller is taking — and his results — simply doesn’t comport with the facts. Compared with past investigations, whether it be the Select Committee on Benghazi or Whitewater, the Mueller investigation has been shorter and more impactful by virtually any measure.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison between the Mueller investigation and the Benghazi investigation:
Mueller
- 13 months (and counting)
- 22 people and companies charged
- 75 criminal charges
- 5 guilty pleas, 1 person sentenced
Benghazi
- 25 months
- 0 domestic indictments
But the hypocrisy doesn’t begin or end there.
Trey Gowdy Reportedly Committed High Crimes While Investigating Benghazi
Gowdy’s work on the Benghazi investigation stands in stark contrast to his work on the Russia investigation.
The House Select Committee on Benghazi, led by Gowdy, all but exploded in the wake of several stunning revelations in late 2015. The CIA revealed in October 2015 that Trey Gowdy altered documents in an attempt to frame Hillary; and in November 2015, Maj. Bradley Podliska, a former investigator on the Benghazi committee staff, filed a lawsuit against Gowdy seeking damages for defamation.
Salon elaborated on the lawsuit at the time, reporting that, “Maj. Bradley Podliska, a former investigator on the Benghazi committee staff, claimed that he’d been improperly and illegally fired from the committee. He also revealed some damning details about the committee’s work, claiming that it had become singularly focused on Hillary Clinton and the State Department, to the exclusion of other agencies involved in the Benghazi response. According to Podliska, he’d been discriminated against for taking leave to fulfill his duties as an Air Force reservist and for resisting the committee’s intense focus on the State Department.”
It was later revealed that Gowdy used public funds to make that lawsuit go away. On Friday 01 December 2017, The Washington Post reported that “Gowdy used $150,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle” that lawsuit.
Then there is Gowdy’s alleged criminal conduct during his Benghazi probe witch-hunt.
As Liberals Unite reported in October 2, 2015: in a bombshell revelation, the Central Intelligence Agency reached out to Democrats serving on the Select Committee on Benghazi to confirm that Chairman Trey Gowdy had altered documents provided to the committee by Hillary Clinton.
On October 7, 2015, Gowdy sent a response to ranking Benghazi committee member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), referring extensively to Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time confidante and adviser to the Clintons, who served as assistant and senior adviser to Bill Clinton from August 1997 until January 2001.
In addition to Sidney Blumenthal’s business interests, Secretary Clinton also apparently received classified information from Blumenthal – information she should have known was classified at the time she received it. In one email, Blumenthal writes “Tyler spoke to a colleague currently at CIA, who told him the agency had been dependent for intelligence from [redacted due to sources and methods].”1 This information, the name of a human source, is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but also human lives. Armed with that information, Secretary Clinton forwarded the email to a colleague–debunking her claim that she never sent any classified information from her private email address. There may be other instances as well where Secretary Clinton passed on classified information she received from Sidney Blumenthal. [emphasis added]
- However, as Newsweek reported, the CIA informed the House Select Committee on Benghazi that Gowdy’s claims were false: “Indeed, according to committee correspondence reviewed by Newsweek, the CIA did tell the panel on Saturday that it had reviewed 127 emails between Clinton and her close friend and outside adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, and none of it was deemed classified. Additionally, according to Newsweek: “’The CIA reviewed the material in question and informed State that it required no redactions,’ the agency informed Susan Sachsman Grooms, staff director and general counsel for the panel’s Democrats, on October 17.” [emphasis added]
- Cummings sent a letter to Gowdy in October in which he dropped the bomb – accusing Gowdy of altering documents in an effort to frame Clinton: “To further inflate your claim, you placed your own redactions over the name of the individual with the words, ‘redacted due to sources and methods.’ To be clear, these redactions were not made, and these words were not added, by any agency of the federal government responsible for enforcing classification guidelines.” [emphasis added]
- Cummings continued, emphasizing the fact that the CIA had thoroughly debunked Gowdy’s false claims against Clinton: “Contrary to your claims, the CIA yesterday informed both the Republican and Democratic staffs of the Select Committee that they do not consider the information you highlighted in your letter to be classified. Specifically, the CIA confirmed that ‘the State Department consulted with the CIA on this production, the CIA reviewed these documents, and the CIA made no redactions to protect classified information.’” [emphasis added]
- Source Links – August 29, 2020
- About Pat Warde: Eulogy Tribute by Eleanor Hughes – April 1, 2019
- Editorial Note – January 15, 2019
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