No, because Trey Gowdy has said so, just a few days ago....in a non partisan interview....
Hillary Clinton s Enemy No. 1 - Michael Hirsh - POLITICO Magazine
Contrary to all rumor and innuendo, Gowdy says he is completely open to the idea that Clinton may have done nothing wrong while secretary of state. He has publicly pointed out āgapsā that go for āmonths" in the materials she has provided on Benghazi. But he insists heās not accusing her of anything; he just doesnāt know yet, he says.
Short and whippet thin, with close-cropped graying hair that looks as if itās hand-combed, Gowdy has a sharp-angled, crudely handsome face; at times he resembles the quick-silver Terminator II guy who beat up on Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Gowdy doesnāt see a similarly relentless pursuit of Hillary as his mission.
Taking on Clinton, Gowdy repeats, āis not my job. Thatās the job of the RNC, and the Republican candidate for president. ā¦ If they hired me for that job they hired the wrong guy. Why would you hire a not-even-two-term guy, all of whose training tells him to go where facts take him, who doesnāt even go to NRCC [National Republican Congressional Committee] dinners, whoās lousy at fundraisers, who hates to travel? Because thatās who youāre getting.ā
The job he was appointed to do last year by House Speaker John Boehner was to chair a special investigatory committee on Benghazi after the Republican right roared its disapproval of previous failed inquiries. What does he know right now, I ask him, based on numerous witness appearances and 850 pages already submitted by the State Department?
Not all that much. He says heās āseen no evidenceā that Clinton ordered a stand-down of security forces in Benghazi, contributing to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11, 2012, or any of the other more damning things the right typically alleges.
And if anyone expects him to chase the presumptive frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination to the gates of political hell to get tens of thousands of her personal emails, well, donāt bank on it. Right now, Gowdy wants an independent arbitrator to decide whether those 30,000 or so emails contain anything significant material to his probe, and he says heād even accept a respected Democratic professional like Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz for that task. But when I point out that another committee he serves on recently accepted a high-level witnessās mere ācertificationā or a personal oath that his submitted emails were complete, Gowdy says a similar compromise might be possible with Clinton.
āThat may be the best we can get. If you canāt get what you think is your reasonable alternative, because youāre dealing with the limitations of the legislative branch. What is your power to dictate otherwise? Public pressure maybe. But beyond that what can you do?ā
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People who know Gowdy well wouldnāt be surprised to hear him talk this way.
A Christian conservative elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010, Gowdy is a believer all right ā but not in what many of his fellow Republicans would consider the ācause,ā namely preventing, by any means necessary, the title President from appearing in front of Hillaryās name. He has little interest in becoming a latter-day Kenneth Starr. He has no visceral hatred of the Clintons, he says.
āI never would have become a prosecutor except for Bill Clinton,ā Gowdy remarks casually, explaining that it was only when Clinton became president in 1993 that he got the job heād long wanted, federal prosecutor in South Carolina, which had been denied him under George H.W. Bush.
When I joke that perhaps he should recuse himself from the Benghazi investigation for his pro-Clinton bias, he laughs. āShe really is going to be, I donāt want to say a small part ā I donāt know ā but she is by no means the central focus of our inquiry. ā¦ John Boehner didnāt even mention her name when he asked me to do this. There are a million other things to pursue with respect to Benghazi other than Secretary Clinton.ā
By the account of many friends and associates, itās the law, not partisan politics, that Gowdy reveres. Gowdy himself says heād much rather be a judge or even a law professor than a member of Congress, a place, he admits to me, that heās come to hate. The House, Gowdy says, has become little more than as a venue for permanent political warfare, unrelieved by action. According to Dave Woodard, Gowdyās political mentor in Spartanburg and the man who launched his career: āHe said to me not long ago, āI thought I was doing more for America by putting bad guys in jail than hitting my head against a wall with 435 morons.āā
