House Select Committee Chair Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., left, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, right, the former chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. (Photo: AP/Carolyn Kaster/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C, escorted Calif. Rep. Darrell Issa, the former chair of the House Government and Oversight Committee, from a closed-door meeting Tuesday.
And it was caught on tape.
Gowdy, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, was deposing Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal about the nearly 60 emails he sent to Clinton about the attack during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state. Issa tried to crash a hearing on Benghazi on Tuesday, but was escorted from the closed-door meeting by Chairman Gowdy.
“I’m a prosecutor; we always follow the rules,” Gowdy told NBC News. “[Issa] is not a [Benghazi] committee member and non-committee members are not allowed in the room during the deposition. Those are the rules and we have to follow them, no exceptions made.”
Issa previously lead an investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks in his role as House Oversight chairman.
During Tuesday’s deposition, Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal was being questioned about the nearly 60 emails he sent to Clinton about the attack during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
Last month, the State Department released more than 800 pages of emails that had been turned over by Clinton from her personal server, but emails mysteriously continue to surface.
“I think it’s noteworthy that no committee of Congress that has previously looked into Benghazi or Libya has uncovered these memos, and I will leave it to you to figure out there was a failure to produce on the former secretary’s part, or a failure to produce on the Department of State’s behalf,” Gowdy told reporters on Tuesday, according to NBC News.
