Accidentally Like A Martyr: The Trey Gowdy Story
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I can’t decide whether this Politico profile of Trey Gowdy is howlingly disingenuous ass-kissing or more like “give ’em enough rope,” but either way it’s pretty entertaining:
It’s left the usually cheerful South Carolina lawmaker sounding frustrated — and, at times, even defeated. Weary of the drumbeat of criticism, Gowdy says he’s stopped watching the news and reading the newspaper. During a Sunday morning TV appearance, Gowdy, usually quick to joke, seemed solemn as he fended off another round of accusations that the committee is a partisan exercise.
Gowdy believes the criticism has been demonstrably unfair — an attempt to “delegitimize” his panel and discredit his personal reputation ahead of Clinton’s high stakes testimony on Thursday.
“It’s not lost on me that the uptick in criticism is [happening] the two weeks before she’s coming,” he says. “I don’t think that that is a coincidence; it’s an attempt to marginalize and impugn the credibility of the panel that’s going to be asking her questions.”
But while he’s feeling tremendous pressure to justify his probe, opening up his investigation goes against his instincts as a former prosecutor, and he’s refusing to change his strategy just because he’s getting buried by negative coverage.