Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said on Tuesday that Hillary Clinton’s defense of her private email setup is “dumbfounding,” and that Sec. of State John Kerry’s defense of it has been “staggering.”
“The former secretary has a way of phrasing things that, for the most part, cast her in the best light possible,” Gowdy said during an interview on “The Mike Gallagher Show.”
“She said ‘I turned over everything, and I had no duty to do so,'” Gowdy said, pausing and then asking: “Are you kidding me?”
“What you turned over, half of it, by your own admission, is public record,” he continued. “What do you mean you had no obligation to turn over the public record? That is dumbfounding to me.”
Gowdy also criticized the State Department and Kerry for stymieing the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s investigation into how Clinton and her top aides handled the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.
“I guess I just assumed that Secretary Kerry would care enough about his reputation that he wouldn’t waste his capital protecting his predecessor,” Gowdy said.
He added that the Benghazi Committee is “having a very difficult time getting documents from the State Department and frankly their defense of her has been staggering.”
“It took me…a little while longer that it should have to figure out the State Department had no interest whatsoever in producing documents to me.”
Gowdy also said during the interview that while Clinton has avoided apologizing for using the off-the-books email setup — she said last week that she was sorry it confused the American public — he believes the Democratic presidential candidate will issue a full, unqualified apology soon.
“I think in a week or two she’s probably just going to apologize flat out for what she did,” Gowdy told Gallagher.
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