Former Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said his Republican colleagues should temper their expectations for the Justice Department investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation.
After Rep. Jim Jordan said during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Wednesday testimony that Attorney General William Barr will find out why Clinton “dirt” tipster Joseph Mifsud lied to the FBI, Gowdy cautioned such bravado can come back to bite Republicans.
“Look, I love Jimmy. Jimmy did a great job yesterday,” Gowdy said Thursday on Fox News. “Republicans usually set the bar so high that when we don’t meet it, the media narrative then becomes Republicans don’t even own their promises. Just promise a fair investigation that goes wherever the facts take us.”
He advocated “confidence” in U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is reviewing the origins of the Russia investigation, and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is examining alleged surveillance abuses by the Justice Department and FBI. Otherwise, Gowdy warned, Republicans may find themselves in a situation similar to that in which former FBI Director James Comey found himself during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“Don’t predict what they are going to find. I mean that’s what we got upset with Comey about, right? Comey made up his mind before he even interviewed Hillary Clinton. Republicans don’t need to do the same thing. Let these two folks do their jobs and then let’s kind of process what they find,” Gowdy said.
Mueller refused to answer questions during his testimony Wednesday about why he never filed charges against Mifsud, a mysterious figure integral to the initiation of the Trump-Russia investigation in 2016, for lying to the FBI in February 2017.
A report published by The Hill on the eve of Mueller’s testimony said Durham’s investigators have reached out to Mifsud’s attorney to set up an interview with Mifsud, who has laid low for the past couple years. There is so much uncertainty about Mifsud that Democratic National Committee lawyers said last year he may even be dead.
Mueller’s report said that during a 2016 meeting, Mifsud informed Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that he learned that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Papadopoulos later repeated this claim to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who informed the U.S. government and prompted the original counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign. Mifsud has denied that he told Papadopoulos the Russians had Clinton’s emails.
