After spending the last two years in Congress protecting Donald Trump from any effective oversight or scrutiny, and despite claims to be done with the bitter partisanship in Washington, Trey “Benghazi” Gowdy is now working for Fox News where it’s clear his assignment is to undermine the coming investigations now that Democrats have taken control of the House of Representatives.
Earlier today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the newly-minted chair of the House Intelligence Committee, announced that his Committee will widen its investigation into Trump’s Russia ties to include reports of money laundering and “financial compromise” of Trump’s relatives and associates. Information about that, Schiff claimed, was uncovered during the last two years but ignored by the then-Republican-controlled committee.
Predictably, host Martha MacCallum showed no interest in asking Gowdy, who sat on the House Intelligence Committee the last two years, about Republican behavior. Instead, she played a clip of Trump whining that Schiff is engaging in “presidential harassment” that “really does hurt out country.” From the guy who engaged in bogus attacks on President Barack Obama’s citizenship. It was an irony lost, of course, on these two sycophants.
And who better to whine about excessive investigations than Gowdy? In case you’ve forgotten, Gowdy headed the Benghazi committee that spent more than $7 million without uncovering anything new about the attack or any evidence of wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton. As Media Matters noted, once Hillary Clinton lost the election, Gowdy lost interest in Benghazi.
Gowdy’s supposed desire to retreat from partisanship by retiring from Congress has also fallen by the wayside. In his statement, Schiff said the Intel Committee “began to pursue credible reports of money laundering and financial compromise related to the business interests of President Trump, his family, and his associates.” Those avenues of inquiry, Schiff said ,“were not completed during the last Congress.
Instead of discussing that situation, Gowdy diverted attention by launching a partisan-sounding, personal attack on Schiff on other grounds:
GOWDY: I just wish Adam would be intimidated by the facts. … Adam was wrong about collusion. Remember, he said he had evidence that was more than circumstantial but not quite direct. … He was wrong about Donald Trump Jr. and who he called before and after the meeting at Trump Tower. Adam has also leaked incorrect information to media outlets.
I wish Adam were serious about oversight. There’s a lot that needs to be done in the intelligence community about leaks, about FISA. He’s not interested in that. He is interested in undoing the 2016 election results and he needs facts for that.
For one thing, it appears that Schiff wanted to find out whether Junior's phone call was to his father, rather than flatly claimed so. MacCallum didn't mention that. Nor did she mention that Schiff had wanted to obtain the phone records but was stymied by the Republican committee. Also, Gowdy conveniently overlooked that Trump Jr.’s phone call, while not to his father, was to someone linked to Moscow. MacCallum didn’t mention it, either.
The two then whined about Schiff not providing the evidence of collusion he claims to have seen. Be careful what you wish for, Trumpers! The committee has only been up and running, thanks to Republican obstruction, for less than a week.
MacCallum snarked, I think most of America would certainly like to know,” about any evidence of collusion. Yeah, most of America, probably, but you can rest assured MacCallum and her fellow Fox lickspittles on will do everything to discredit any such findings.
In fact, we already saw evidence of that right in this segment.
Watch it below, from the February 6, 2019 The Story with Martha MacCallum.
I find it interesting that Gowdy was all-in for investigating any and every thing he could spin about President Obama’s White House, and that before this, the GOP was all-in to investigate any and every thing they could spin about Bill Clinton’s White House. But for some reason these guys went silent about the criminality in the W/Cheney House, and they’re frantically trying to gaslight anyone who mentions the venality of the Pence White House.
BTW – wasn’t Gowdy supposed to be going back to his community and working there, rather than taking big money to opine on a Right Wing propaganda network? One could get the impression that he’s going to try to run for another political office. But he wouldn’t be thinking of doing that, now would he?