Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., admitted the reason he grilled FBI Director James Comey in a House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday was to determine if Hillary Clinton made false exculpatory statements in the agency’s initial investigation about her use of private email servers.

“The reason I went through that exercise with Director Comey is let’s assume he’s right and there’s an intent element in the statute — I think there was circumstantial evidence that she had the intent and one way to prove … intent with circumstantial evidence is false exculpatory statements,” Gowdy told Fox News host Megyn Kelly late Thursday. “Innocent people don’t lie so if you have a series of false statements then you need to ask yourself ‘why do you feel the need to mislead?’ It might be consciousness of guilt.”