The Gowdy Interview

Trey Gowdy's interview with Maria Bartiromo this morning is causing a stir. We've discussed it a bit in the comments, but I'll deal with it again here.

I just now listened to Gowdy and I think he has been misunderstood. Many took him to be saying--as a former prosecutor himself--that in his considered legal judgment Durham has no case against anyone except Clinesmith. That's not actually what he was saying. Here's what I think he means, as I just set it out in an email to a friend:

Here's what I think he's saying--and I caution that I'm trying to make sense out of some conflicting statements:


The key part is just a minute or so long, around 4:00 when Maria asks: "There's concern that Durham is dragging his feet. How come we haven't heard from Durham."

Gowdy admits that he doesn't know what indictments there will be, and beyond that he points out that John Brennan--despite his public spin through a spokesman--could yet become a target. Gowdy then says:

"With respect to Durham, my expectation" is that Durham will get access to everything he needs to write the ultimate 'report', "the definitive accounting of what happened," what went down in 2016 and beyond.

If you put those two statements together, then Gowdy can't possibly be offering a considered prosecutive opinion, since he admits he doesn't know what Durham knows. Then he says,

"Whether or not there'll be more indictments, Maria, I don't know and I'd like to assume that there will not be. ... I'm assuming that the Clinesmith indictment will be the only one." He says he knows that view puts him in a small minority. But what he's doing is, in my opinion, expressing his desire ("I'd like to assume") for what, in his view, should happen---no more than that. He offers no reason to believe, from a strictly prosecutive point of view, that his desired outcome will, in fact, be the end result. In other words, he's offering a political hope.

From that standpoint, I think this is what he's trying to communicate.

Gowdy thinks that only one minor indictment rather than a full criminal accounting would be the best solution for the country--a political accounting rather than a criminal accounting that would involve indicting all the malefactors. Presumably he thinks that that would help the country 'heal.'

To me, that's obviously totally misguided--Gowdy simply doesn't understand Leftists. Even as we speak the Left is openly contemplating stealing an election and is using street violence as a means to that end. That the Left is probably misguided in that hope is beside the point--it points to what they're willing to do. Following up on criminal lawfare and abuse of Deep State tools against the electorate's constitutional choice for president, they are now willing--as they already showed in the Obama years--to instigate outright violence to achieve their ends.

Gowdy thinks exposure--as Hillary was exposed and then defeated in 2016--is a suitable political punishment for a political crime. And so he says that, regardless who gets indicted--and he then provides a laundry list of the main malefactors--the important thing is that "the jury", the American voters, get their chance to weigh in at the polls. He obviously thinks this is all working to Trump's benefit.

IMO, that's crazy, for a number of reasons. One reason is that a "report" simply doesn't carry the weight of an indictment--not with the voters, "the jury", and not with the criminals. The Left has now metastasized like a cancer within our body politic and exposure is not a cure for a deadly disease that continues to spread throughout our institutions. They have become serial criminals. They have committed crimes against the constitution already and, unless held to account in a court, they will do it again. Only criminal accountability has even a hope of stopping this madness.

Those, I believe, are Gowdy's views, but he cites no sources to support the notion that these are Barr's or Durham's views. Commenter EZ pointed out earlier that, if it were true that there will be no more indictments, then Durham's team would be hemorrhaging prosecutors--because what prosecutor would want to waste career time on what would be, from a prosecutorial standpoint, an absolutely pointless exercise? A report? What would be in it for those prosecutors, when they could be getting convictions and building a resume? I think that makes sense.

That having been said, Gowdy does say at the very end that "narrowly avoiding indictment cannot be the only way we mete out punishment in our culture." But that statement doesn't make sense. Literally. What he seems to mean is that there needs to be accountability for people who avoid criminal indictment. But, as I said above, he offers no basis for that conclusion, and admits that he has no inside knowledge.

Again, I think the key is that Gowdy says "I'd like to assume there will not be [more indictments]. In point of fact, however, if anything it has been AG Barr's recent statements that have built up expectations for significant indictments. Gowdy is entitled to his views on what's best for the nation. I happen to disagree. But as for expactions, I haven't allowed Gowdy to govern my expectations thus far, and I'm not ready to do so now.

I forgot to provide the video: