A lawyer representing former FBI Director James Comey took a rhetorical shot at outgoing Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., during an interview Monday evening.
David Kelly made an appearance on MSNBC to discuss how his client, Comey, reached a deal with congressional Republicans to have him testify privately this week. But the conversation also touched on the effectiveness of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Kelly drew an unflattering comparison between Mueller and Gowdy’s chairmanship of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Gowdy “spent several years trying to get an investigation, he spent tens of millions of dollars on Benghazi and came up with nothing,” Kelly said.
Whereas, with Mueller, who has a dozens of indictments and plea deals under his belt, Kelly said it is “indisputable” that he has been more effective than House Republican investigators.
Congressman Gowdy “spent several years trying to get an investigation, he spent tens of millions of dollars on Benghazi and came up with nothing”
“Indisputable” that Mueller has proven more effective – James Comey’s lawyer: pic.twitter.com/2OhIv6b8cL
— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) December 4, 2018
Gowdy, who is the outgoing chairman of the Oversight Committee and is retiring at the end of this term, oversaw the Benghazi panel’s two-year-plus investigation into the Obama administration’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack in Libya where four Americans were killed.
The panel’s report found that senior Obama administration officials, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, misled Americans during and after the attack. The Democrats on the committee released their own report, vowing to highlight “abuses” from Gowdy and the rest of the panel.
Comey revealed on Sunday that he was backing off his legal challenge to a subpoena from the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee for him to testify this week behind closed doors as part of a joint investigation by outgoing Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees into decision-making by the Justice Department and FBI ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., later put out a statement confirming a deal had been struck. “Mr. Comey will join us for a closed-door transcribed interview later this week. We will release the transcript of his interview to the public as soon as possible after the interview, in the name of our combined desire for transparency,” Goodlatte said.
Gowdy had been critical of Comey’s now-defunct efforts to fight the subpoena in favor of a public hearing, saying last month, “James Comey really said, ‘Truth is best served by transparency’? Did he interview Hillary Clinton in public?” However, he did concede that Comey was “right” about to be worried about targeted leaks.
