Former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy just spoke out to slam House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for making himself a “fact witness” with the revelation that his office had contact with the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower.
“Right now he’s made himself a fact witness,” Gowdy told Fox News [1] host Martha MacCallum host on Friday. “He is in the evidentiary chain for what happened with this whistleblower and I hope the Republicans make him testify.”
Gowdy went on to mock Schiff for being awarded “Four Pinocchios” by the Washington Post on Friday, claiming he hadn’t told the truth about what he knew about the whistleblower. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler said that while Schiff is leading the charge in the investigation into the Trump-Ukraine scandal, the Democrat hasn’t been truthful in the process.
“I think you got four [Pinocchios] only because you can’t get five,” Gowdy said jokingly. “He got the maximum sentence you could get from the Washington Post fact checker — and don’t you know how hard that was for the Washington Post to give Adam Schiff four Pinocchios?”
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Gowdy, a former South Carolina congressman, described Schiff as a “career offender” when it came to the truth. He was then asked how long House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would put up with Schiff.
“The same guy that had the parody a week or so ago, the same guy that says he has evidence that even [former Special Counsel Robert] Mueller couldn’t find,” Gowdy said. “The question I had is, How long is Speaker Pelosi going to put up with Adam mishandling this investigation?”
This comes after Kessler revealed that Schiff was not honest when asked if he had advanced knowledge about the whistleblower’s concerns about the now-infamous phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a series of interviews.
“Schiff’s answers are especially interesting in the wake of reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post that the whistleblower approached a House Intelligence Committee staff member for guidance before filing a complaint with the Intelligence Community inspector general,” Kessler wrote. [3]
Last month, in an interview with CNN host Anderson Cooper, Schiff was asked if he was in contact with the whistleblower, or even if he simply knew their identity.
“I don’t know the identity of the whistleblower … I don’t want to get into any particulars. I want to make sure that there’s nothing that I do that jeopardizes the whistleblower in any way,” Schiff said in response when asked if the whistleblower has contacted him.
Kessler called this a “classic dodge” and pointed out that the CNN host didn’t bother with a follow-up question, which helped Schiff avoid giving a potentially damaging answer.
“He managed not to mislead; he just simply did not answer the question,” Kessler wrote of Schiff.