Trey Gowdy wants Republicans not on the Benghazi committee to 'shut up' about it

Trey Gowdy has a message for his fellow Republicans not serving on the House Select Committee on Benghazi: Shut up.

The Republican congressman from South Carolina and chairman of the committee appeared on Face the Nation Sunday, and said Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) and former committee staffer Maj. Bradley Podliska are wrong about the committee targeting former secretary of state and current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. "I get that there's a presidential campaign going on," he said. "I have told my own Republican colleagues and friends, shut up talking about things that you don't know anything about. And unless you're on the committee, you have no idea what we've done, why we've done it, and what new facts we have found."

In September, McCarthy said the reason why Clinton's poll numbers were slipping was because of the Benghazi committee, and two weeks later Hanna said "there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton." Podliska, who is filing a lawsuit against the committee, said he was fired because he wasn't focusing just on Clinton. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the committee, was also on Sunday's Face the Nation, and said it's time for the investigation to turn toward how to stop a similar attack from ever happening. "At some point," he said, "we gotta move from politics to policy."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up