Former South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said Tuesday special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have a “pretty good case” while discussing the charges brought against longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone.
Gowdy, who rejoined his private law firm in South Carolina since leaving office earlier this month, said Stone’s alleged lies to Congress had to amount to “material misrepresentation with the intent to deceive.”
“It’s tough to win these cases, so the fact that Mueller has brought so many of them, they have resulted in guilty pleas or admissions, tells me he must feel like he has a pretty good case,” Gowdy said on “Fox & Friends.”
[Read more: William Barr says Congress can release his final report on Mueller]
Thirty-four people have been indicted or pleaded guilty as part of Mueller’s Russia investigation, which is looking for possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin and has been criticized by President Trump and his allies as a “witch hunt.”
Last week a grand jury indicted Stone on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstructing a congressional inquiry about communications with WikiLeaks — stemming from his interview with the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017 as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Gowdy was a member of the panel at the time, and he declined to say whether he thought at the time Stone was being deceptive.
“I am not a human polygraph machine. I do not know, even if he made a factual mistake, I don’t know whether or not he had intent to deceive,” Gowdy said.
Stone pleaded not guilty in federal court on Tuesday and, while he has indicated a willingness to cooperate with Mueller, claims he will not testify against Trump.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated Roger Stone pleaded not guilty on Monday; it has since been changed to the correct date, Tuesday. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
