Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
House Benghazi Czar Trey Gowdy has repeatedly insisted that he's laser focused on finding out what happened in Benghazi, that his concern is entirely about truth and justice (and not attacking Hillary Clinton), and that he wants to be judged by the work he does. Okay, then, let's judge him by that:
A House Democratic aide familiar with the committee's process tells The Huffington Post that, as of Friday morning, there have been 53 interviews and depositions with witnesses called in for Gowdy's probe. The closed-door interviews are staff-led, said the aide, so when members do come, they are typically passive observers.
Gowdy has attended fewer than 10 of the 53. He was there for Cheryl Mills, Clinton's chief of staff when she was secretary of state; Jake Sullivan, Clinton's former deputy chief of staff and current foreign policy adviser on her presidential campaign; Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton adviser; and Bryan Pagliano, a State Department staffer who managed Clinton's private email server.
Whom didn't Gowdy go to hear? Three of the four diplomatic security agents who survived the terrorist attack. He also didn't attend interviews with CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell or former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn.
Who are you going to believe: Trey Gowdy or your lying eyes (as they fix on his attendance record)? Oh, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican Rep. Richard Hanna's statements that the Benghazi Committee's goal is attacking Hillary Clinton. They line up on the side of your lying eyes and his attendance record.
A Gowdy spokesman insists that Gowdy is doing all sorts of things that don't involve Hillary Clinton or people close to her blah, blah, blah. But if it's not necessary for Gowdy to show up for the interviews and the ones he does show up for are Clinton-related, while he skips out on the diplomatic security agents who survived the attack ... he can keep trying with those denials, but you don't have to have x-ray vision to see through that.