Meet the chief prosecutor in the GOP’s Benghazi show trial
By Dana Milbank, WashPost, Published: May 7
Rep. Trey Gowdy, the tea party Republican tapped to lead the new committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks, made a telling slip Wednesday morning in describing his mission.
Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.”
A trial? And the Obama administration is the defense? So much for that “serious investigation” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised; his new chairman intends to play prosecutor, proving the administration’s guilt to the jury — in this case, the public.
As a legal matter, Gowdy, a volcanic former prosecutor, is on shaky ground declaring his committee a court and his investigation a trial. But his honesty is refreshing, and it confirms what seemed implicit in Boehner’s selection of the second-term South Carolinian to head the panel over more experienced and less combative colleagues.
In a broader sense, Gowdy’s rapid ascent in the party fits closely with what House Republicans are doing in this midterm election year: abandoning any pretense of legislating in favor of unremitting hostilities with the White House.
(More here.)
Rep. Trey Gowdy, the tea party Republican tapped to lead the new committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks, made a telling slip Wednesday morning in describing his mission.
Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.”
A trial? And the Obama administration is the defense? So much for that “serious investigation” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised; his new chairman intends to play prosecutor, proving the administration’s guilt to the jury — in this case, the public.
As a legal matter, Gowdy, a volcanic former prosecutor, is on shaky ground declaring his committee a court and his investigation a trial. But his honesty is refreshing, and it confirms what seemed implicit in Boehner’s selection of the second-term South Carolinian to head the panel over more experienced and less combative colleagues.
In a broader sense, Gowdy’s rapid ascent in the party fits closely with what House Republicans are doing in this midterm election year: abandoning any pretense of legislating in favor of unremitting hostilities with the White House.
(More here.)
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