Trey Gowdy talks about leaving Washington

good morning we'd like to welcome you to this Facebook live interview with congressman trey Gowdy I think you were saying earlier this is your first Facebook live experience I think so but at my age I have recall problems so I think it's my first one first one that I recall yes sir you recently announced that you're not gonna seek reelection you're chairman of the Oversight Committee your friend Tim Scott says you've had a meteoric rise why is now the time I don't love it you know you've been in the journalism business longer than I've been in politics you covered the very first race where I ran for District Attorney and I guess you were there when I was at the US Attorney's Office I loved the justice system I loved facts I love fairness I think process matters politics at least at the national level is about winning and the end justifies the means and you just have to decide whether or not you know I got what 2/3 of life in the rearview mirror and 1/3 of life in the windshield and I just want to spend it in a system that I'm more comfortable and and in a system that I respect more and that's the justice system I don't know that I'm good enough at anything to launch my own course you know I have a son finishing law school have a daughter who claims she's going I have a chief of staff there's a really good lawyer and some others I I I'll practice in the Upstate it may be with an existing firm and it may be in the civil justice system as opposed to the criminal justice system they're really only three ways to prosecute you can be the US attorney the Attorney General or the solicitor we happen to have a really good solicitor in Spartanburg which is where I'm gonna live so that jobs taken we have an attorney general jobs taken and I've already done that the federal prosecution thing so it'll be the simple justice system that you know Bobby it could even be you know say this newspapers say this newspaper has an investigation done rise to the level of a criminal probe but you want to know what happened and you and you need to hire someone that is fact centric and fair and has not already made up his or her mind and you may hire a law firm to do that preliminary investigation I went to Baylor as you as you may recall um significant issues with title nine Michigan State significant issues with with the physician that mistreated the and abused the USA a gymnastics team all of those investigations are not criminal in nature but the same skill set would apply was interested forever was interested it was always my dream job you know Donald Donald Russell's courthouse is right around the block and it's hard to go up in Spartanburg and not be aware that Donald Russell was a governor he was a United States Senator he was a federal judge he was the president University of South Carolina you know arguably one of the more distinguished people who ever came from my hometown I was always my dream job my wife knows me better than anyone else and she knows what I'm not good at which is a bigger category than the things I am good at I think she prevailed upon me that's a really isolated existence an appellate court judge and for every interesting case you get a criminal case constitutional issue you may get ten antitrust cases you may get patent cases and no offense to antitrust and patent law it's not nearly as interesting as criminal law so the isolation I think she also convinced me that well I do like fairness advocacy is a little bit different from just sitting there as a dispassionate judge I watched an old argument this morning actually John whew who is one of the judges I have the most respect for the humility to not insert yourself into a fact pattern is a really important discipline and it can be learned but you have to ask yourself do you want to learn it do you enjoy being an advocate or do you enjoy being kind of a neutral detached umpire and again my wife has known me since I was 17 years old and she helped me understand that I probably would not be a great appellate judge I don't think I have a legacy I think the the legacy is however you may have impacted people's lives and I think my Republican and Democrat colleagues would tell you he's fair he's funnier than you think watching YouTube or watching interviews um that's really the only part of the day where I'm like that I'd rather make you laugh and make you uncomfortable I really actually Bob think the greatest legacy that the folks I work with in Spartanburg and Greenville office the greatest legacy we'll leave is one the none of your readers and none of your viewers know anything about its constituent service is helping people that feel like they don't have a fighting chance against a big bureaucracy and it's also something we started about six years ago and the only rule I have was no media and you don't know anything about it but I'm not running again so nobody can accuse me of doing this for political purposes we have a program called I am an achiever where I partner with teachers and guidance counselor's throughout the district and they identify children that have overcome significant obstacles in life whether it is the death of a parent the death of a sibling an illness and we go into their classroom and we recognize them and we try to offer them a word of encouragement that how you conduct yourself even in the face of adversity gets noticed and I would bet you looking back 20 years those young people that we have interacted with with no media no one knows anything about it you won't see any pictures you won't see these stories about it but in terms of impacting people's lives I hope those children remember that a middle-aged old man from Washington took notice of what they accomplished and recognized them in front of their classmates so I think people outside of South Carolina will from the investigation I mean we learned a ton we did not know who rescued our our survivors from the NX until our investigation we didn't learn about what we call a civics which is a secure video conference where they made the decision you go to Tripoli and not Benghazi I mean if you think about all the questions surrounding the Ghazi why didn't we get there in time we answered that question why'd you go to Tripoli and not Benghazi which is where the firefight was we answered that question who rescued our folks why was the security profile low those are the questions that I was interested in when I took the job but in the throes of a pull of a presidential campaign a I would argue wildly disproportionate interest was in Secretary Clinton our report mentions her name less than the Democrat report does she was a really important witness in a number of areas she was one of a hundred witnesses that we interviewed most people can name five other witnesses we interviewed I can't but they can't the legacy of the Benghazi committee to me is the report we wrote and no one has taken exception to a single fact that we found and as you may recall I certainly do the right wasn't happy because I wasn't tough enough on her the left wasn't happy because they they thought that it was all about her and once a narrative gets in in people's minds it's really hard to defeat that that narrative so I can write a report that that doesn't mention her I think the Democrat report mentions Trump more than the Republican report mentions Clinton and you'll have to refresh my recollection I'd only think President Trump had anything to do with Libya or Benghazi so the narrative was written that it's about her we did learn that she had a server put up 100 witness interviews we did two were related to her email 2% so I can't control what others write what others focus on I'm at peace with what we did and importantly the family members of the four who lost their lives and the end of witnesses the eyewitnesses who survived I think are appreciative of the effort the partisanship I think it existed a little bit before that you know the first hearing we had dana Milbank complimented it which may be a sign of the Apocalypse pretty progressive Washington Post columnist um he complimented it we Skyped in and Tammy Duckworth who's a friend that's now in the Senate because she she could not be there we Skyped in another Democrat I did everything I could to try to have hearings that were um apolitical to show more grace towards the other side that would have been shown I think to us had the roles been reversed but it was never going to be the kind of investigation that that you may have wanted Aram may have wanted it just wasn't going to be that and then when her email was discovered everything changed everything changed and look the only reason the email was discovered is because if you're doing any investigation you're going to want to read correspondence Chris Stevens emails we discovered no other committee found those those for some reason wearable much less interest to the public than hers and this is the ambassador and one instance the day before the attack describing the situation in Libya and how he felt that's really significant if you're investigating what happened and why very little attention to his emails a lot of attention to hers in a courtroom with twelve people that haven't made up their minds you can kind of control the dynamic a little bit presidential race where almost everyone's made up their mind it's tough justice system we're in fact still matter facts are the only thing better having function in politicized atmosphere not very well there's a really small constituency for fairness the most recent thing that's happened in Washington the Rob Porter situation with very credible allegations and domestic violence you try to take a facts centric approach who knew what when who did you tell politics is about winning and you're gonna be criticized if you ask tough questions over your own side and you're gonna be given no credit by the other side for asking tough questions it's just it is unlike anything we do not treat each other that way in everyday life I am sure you have friends that have different political ideations I know that I do including some that I live with they have different political ideations we treat each other fairly we either change the subject we find something we agree on we make it through life I'm even in spite of the contrast not always running toward the conflict politics is totally different you can agree on ninety percent and you're gonna spend all of your time on the ten percent upon what you do not agree and so do facts matter um I don't know I never chant it lock her up you will never ever ever see a tape of me at any rallies saying that for a couple of reasons number one legislators don't like anybody else and we do have something called due process and it matters it matters if you're innocent it matters if you're guilty in politics you validate and ratify with the largest group already believes and you're gonna be successful recently there's been a lot of talk about dueling memos you were or at least according to reports you draft at the Nunez minimum you're are you happy with the finished product what what does that mean we'll improve and what does it not prove on the star to begin because I do think is abhorrent I don't think I don't think this part of us ever been told before I at the time I was the only Republican member who had gone over to the department and read everything so not only do you have members that are on the House Intelligence Committee which by the way is an incredibly hard committee to get on the speaker and the speaker alone picks who's on that committee it's highly coveted so you've got Republican members there that it that entrusted just one person to go look at all of the underlying data and I did not draft and then though I edited the memo and I could have added things to it I suppose I would have been allowed to do that to me that memo was a notice document if you're a colleague on the house Intel committee and I've read everything and you have not at some point I got to communicate to you what I've read and human nature is you communicate those things that you find concerning I don't think my colleagues were interested in me writing a memo about all the things I think the FBI and DOJ did correctly I think there's a presumption that they're gonna do things correctly I think they were interested in things that caught my attention as being a typical so there are a ton of things are atypical I'll be relying on political opposition research in a court pleading is unusual I've never seen it done before and if you're gonna rely on it if you and I are political opponents and you're going to take opposition research on me to a judge or to a law enforcement agency I think there's an expectation that law enforcement agency is going to vet or investigate the reliability of that information so we know the political opposition research was used we know that it was not vetted we know that the source Christopher Steele really wasn't a source he was just repeating what others in another country had told him and we also know the FBI wound up dismissing him as a source for breaching two separate FBI rules if you're the finder of fact if you're the judge do you want to know that do you want to know where the information came from if I have information on you I think it's fair to know whether it came from your best friend or your mortal enemy it doesn't mean it's not true but it does instruct it in for me maybe I need to go investigate equally hard if it's his best friend or his mortal enemy there's something called bias I need to go investigate and see how accurate it is so I did feel an obligation to notify my colleagues on the committee of what I found my colleagues were alarmed and many of them are our old hands at intelligence and they're not easily alarmed and then we voted to make it available to the entire conference now keep in mind Bob every single Democrat voted no on releasing our memo every single Republican voted YES on releasing the Democrat memo everyone there a week behind us there's a cost of being a week behind and there's a benefit to being a week behind and Adam Schiff is no dummy he's a better politician he is a lawyer but he's pretty good at both he knew going a week behind allowed him to respond to our memo made whoever goes second it has a tremendous advantage you know what the other side's talking about so he wanted to go second but have them both released at the same time yeah Adam you should have done it when we did it you're a week behind us and oh by the way you also in my judgment intentionally included things that you knew you could not include which creates this aura that something is being withheld I read every word of the DIMM memo twice there's a way to phrase it and get all the information they want out without revealing sources and methods there's a way to do it and I'm sure their second iteration will do it that way but the first one was designed for you and others to ask me why are you treating their memo differently and they were successful that's what's happened you have a Russia investigation completely without a dossier there was a meeting at Trump Tower that has nothing to do with the dossier there was a George papadopolis meeting that has nothing to do with the dossier so Bob Muller has at least three different functions I can think of even if there were no was no dossier so to the extent Republicans think it undercuts Bob Muller I don't agree to the extent Republicans believe that there is no Russia investigation Russia interfered with our election and attempted to influence our election with or without a dossier and and we need to find out how and why and make sure it doesn't happen again none of that has anything to do with a dossier so the Nunez memo to me is from someone who is biased towards the FBI and the Department of Justice it is it is my way of saying I have higher expectations of you as the world's premier law enforcement agency than to rely upon political opposition research that you did not vet that doesn't even get into the bias and the struck in page text I worked around cops for over two decades I've never ever seen that level of not just bias animus towards the target of an investigation it's just it's unprecedented in any case that I have seen so the bureau and DOJ do have legitimate questions they should answer I'm confident they can but not if they're not asked and if it were up to Adam Schiff and the Democrats on the Intel committee you and I would not have been able to have that last exchange because they didn't want any of that information coming out something else I'd like to talk about 17 kids dead what do we do how do we stop that I wish I you know I like to start with the law you're there are restrictions on every right you have there you know as a journalist or even restrictions on your First Amendment right there are things that you you cannot commit actual malice they're restrictions on the Second Amendment they're restrictions on every right that we have so there there is no argument that that there can and are and should be restrictions that right is not absolute it is important I think for your viewers to understand why there is the Second Amendment and which of the arguments in support of it make the most sense the one that makes the most sense to me is the self-defense argument you will hear from time to time we have to be able to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government if government has nuclear weapons you're not going to be able to protect yourself that argument does not does not sway me the self-defense argument particularly because of the victims I've seen throughout the course of my life it does sway me so when I think about gun control first thing I'll think of is all the controls we currently have my mind immediately goes to what laws could have been enforced to prevent this shooting or any other shooting and if the answer is not if the answer is there is no law on the books that if enforce would have prevented that then I think the conversation shifts you okay what additional laws do we need if it is it magazine capacity but keep in mind what we're arguing with magazine capacity keep in mind if you argue I think the capacity should be 12 12 dead children is not acceptable to anyone so of course the the lower the fatality rate better of course but if the objective is to eliminate the fatalities altogether then there's an access to weaponry there's the nature of the weaponry there's the magazine capacity there's a mental illness component to it as you know it's already against the law for someone who's been adjudicated mentally ill to possess even a bullet a single bullet I am disappointed at how gun prosecutions went down for eight years I find that inexplicable how gun prosecutions could go down at the federal level if there are insufficient gun laws and there is a nexus between if we had this law we would not have these mass killings I'll tell you what I've said two days ago sign me up sign me up the gun show loophole we hear a lot about that and I asked my Democrat colleagues all the time how many mass killings have been conducted with firearms purchased at gun shows if the answer is none then I'm afraid what you're doing I'm close to gun show loophole it's not nearly as big as the public thinks anyway go ahead close it if you're not impacting mass killings then what have you done you have done something that addresses a problem that currently does not exist I want to address the problem of people who and it may be a cultural I don't talk to my daughter yesterday other countries don't have these kinds of shootings I don't know I don't know what it is about our culture that in our kids lifetime we have had this proliferation of mass killing but if you or anyone else can come up with a a constitutionally sound way of preventing it you can sign me up bump stops that would certainly I think reduce it can be done administratively and add a what and it can but again there was the uproar there was a talk about action no action so what is it gonna take I don't know the bump stock was easy to me fully automatic weapons are per se illegal and if any device turns a semi-automatic into a fully automatic that is tantamount to sanctioning a fully automatic weapon which are already against the law against federal law I don't care about States against federal law to have a fully automatic machine gun I don't know for two or three days there will be discussion about it and then there will there will be a movement on to something else I eat member I guess would have to tell you what drives it from his or her consciousness for those of us Boehner asked me to meet with the parents from Sandy Hook with him nothing drives that conversation from my consciousness nothing well in my whole seven years will compare to having parents past pictures of their children across the table to me so I used to prosecute those cases I know what gun violence does you bring me something that is constitutionally sound defensible that addresses mass killings about whatever definition you want to use I'm happy to advocate for it but when the best I hear is a gun show loophole there's not going to stop a single mass killing then that leads me to believe that the issue is they want the issue as opposed to the remedy I'm still in the throes of a couple of investigations Russia probe what Russia did to interfere with the 2016 election with whom if anyone did they do it the US government's response and and then the issue of the dissemination of classified information chairman Goodlatte on judiciary and I are looking at the decisions made 2016 by the Department of Justice you know keep in mind there was the time Democrats were not all they also were not happy with decisions made in 2016 the press conference a lot of Democrats thought was unusual and it was the letters to Congress in the fall of 2016 a lot of Democrats thought not only were unusual but impacted the election we're doing these interviews privately which is my preference for doing interviews they're not public so you know the public may not be aware that we're doing it but it is the most conducive way of getting information private transcribed interviews we are investigating the interim security clearance as of a couple of days ago oversight can be us a gymnastics team that's a number of our investigations are bipartisan and apolitical they don't make a ton of news those are the ones I actually enjoy the most when all All Hands are on deck pulling in the same direction there'll be an immigration debate at some point soon we have appropriations coming up and the late spring early summer election years are unusual and that most folks go home at a certain point to campaign for re-election so the calendar is very different in an election year than it is in an off year I'm not a big traveler house Intel committee expects you to travel some I'm going to go to the Middle East with some Senate colleagues some interesting things even the last week that have happened there other than that try to do the constituent service that is expected and deserved in this district and finish out be there on the last day or the last vote on daca I'm not aware of any category in which children are viewed through the same legal prism as adults I don't know if you've ever been in a grocery store and seeing a kid take a grape we generally don't prosecute them for that if you ever been in a restaurant your kids screaming his head off we don't prosecute them for violating the noise ordinance you don't prosecute kids who are in the car while their parents speeding or driving under the influence in fact you view them as a victim so I think the law in every category treats children particularly before the age of legal accountability differently from the way you treat the parents if I were Emperor you should move but if you didn't move I would have a pretty robust background check I don't want people with domestic violence convictions on a path to anything other than deportation I don't want people with with with violent crime criminal histories I don't want if you if you have made decisions that would lead reasonable people to conclude that you would not be a good fellow citizen they don't want your own path to anything if you can pass that background check I was having breakfast with a really conservative Senate friend of mine yesterday who pointed out our country does not have a great history of having people with presence but not citizenship going all the way back to the times of slavery presidents without citizenship usually doesn't work for either side so I'm open to citizenship for daca children that can pass a rigorous background check and I think Democrats would privately tell you that's success but we're in a political world and as soon as Republicans suggest something that might be acceptable the target moves the goal moves and again I hate uses phrase would you rather have the issue or rather have the resolution if it's about winning sometimes you'd rather have the issue from 2008 to 2010 my friends on the other side of the aisle had every gear of Government House the Senate in the White House he didn't see immigration reform and you didn't see gun control maybe they had higher priorities I don't know but they had two years and we see the one of them so I would like to see daca fix I don't think border security should be a negotiating chip in an immigration reform I I think border security and interior security because well over half the people that are currently here unlawfully didn't cross any border they were invited and overstayed so you can build the tallest wall you want that's not going to take care of that border and interior security so you can have you know some confidence that this is the last time we're gonna have to have this conversation as a nation I think my fellow citizens are remarkably generous particularly with people that have played by the rules and manifests a desire to be a constructive fellow citizen I think they're incredibly generous and I think that is relatively easy to accomplish if we were not in a political environment where we were always trying to one-up the other side for the next election before you ran the first time one of those being you expects expressed a concern for the direction eight years later how do you feel about the direction on you know that's a good and a weird question I think politically we're not in a great place I think the overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens have a desire to live and coexist peacefully with one another even in a world of contrasts you know we're in the Upstate of South Carolina you are essentially born a Clemson or a Carolina fan and you cannot overstate how significant those are it's more important than religion and politics to some people yet we coexist peacefully 364 days out of the year contrast is fine it's the conflict that is debilitating that is my DePaul's two weeks ago to think about whether or not I should mention the names of the Democrats the first two texts I got when I announced I was leaving were from Democrats progressive Democrats I had to stop and think should I use their names because it would hurt them for their constituents to know that they were friends with a crazy guy from South Carolina that's a terrible place for us to be and I'm not trying to not trying to advertise our book but senator Scott and I are equally concerned about it we have written a book it's not a political book at all the only people made fun of in our book are tim scott and trey gowdy but it is a book about overcoming differences and I do think that 80% of us have about 80% of life in common before our interview started you and I were talking about our daughters that is enough for you and I to spend the rest of the day talking we have the exact same hopes and dreams and aspirations for our children we're both golfers although you get to play a lot more than I do so we have a choice we can identify those things we have in common or we can run to the things we don't and then and then demagogue and demonize one another and I just I've seen the enemy I've been in a courtroom I had I've seen what evil looks people who disagree with me on political issues are not the enemy as somebody that maybe my persuasive skills need to be better or maybe we just agree to disagree on how we're gonna get someplace I am worried about the modern political environment I remain cautiously optimistic that my fellow citizens are really good at figuring out how to get along with one another even in spite of political or ideological differences thank you yes sir thank you appreciate it

Channel: GoUpstate / Spartanburg Herald-Journal

Views: 154,832

Rating: 4.8785119 out of 5

Keywords: Trey Gowdy, Rep Trey Gowdy, US Rep. Trey Gowdy, Rep. Gowdy, Gowdy, Benghazi, Clinton Gowdy, oversight committee

Id: E9o3V6rPtKM

Length: 35min 32sec (2132 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 16 2018