Former FBI Director James Comey’s stunning demand that the rest of the world should apologize to him for his own transgressions is not sitting well with retired South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy.
“He’s a two-time offender,” Gowdy said of James Comey during an appearance Friday on Fox News. “Remember, Horowitz also dinged him for his handling of the Clinton email investigation, so now he gets dinged in the other major case he handled in 2016.”
In a report released last year, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz excoriated James Comey for behaving in an “insubordinate” way and engaging in “ad hoc” decision-making during the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In another report concerning the memos about President Trump that James Comey had leaked released this week, the IG said that James Comey “violated Department or FBI policy” by sharing his memos with the media, set a “dangerous example” for his colleagues and sought to “achieve a personally desired outcome.”
Following the release of this report, James Comey posted two tweets in which he wrote that an apology from “all those who’ve spent two years talking about me ‘going to jail’ or being a ‘liar and a leaker’” would be nice.
“I never said Comey should or would go to jail,” Gowdy continued Friday.
“I’m certainly not going to apologize to anyone who violated FBI and Department of Justice policy, who violated an employment agreement, who shared sensitive information about an ongoing investigation, who sent classified information to an unauthorized person and then had amnesia when the FBI came to his home to try to retrieve government property.”
“I’m not going to apologize, but I will give him a piece of unsolicited advice. … You should aspire to more in life than simply skating by without having been indicted,” Trey Gowdy continued.
“If that is in your goal in life — to just not meet every essential element of a criminal offense — and you think you should be congratulated and apologized to for- simply because you were not indicted, you better give back some of those ‘Higher Loyalties’ speaking fees.”
Chaffetz also asked Gowdy about concerns from those who say justice hasn’t been meted out here — that James Comey is being let off the hook.
“I would tell my fellow citizens this: We have to have other ways of meting out accountability other than simply indictments,” Gowdy replied. “Hillary Clinton was never indicted, she was never charged, therefore never guilty of a crime, yet the American jury in 2016 meted out a consequence.”
“James Comey, whether he likes it or not, all of his past … will be forgotten. God in history will be all of our judges, but they will judge James Comey based on the fact that he got dinged on both of the investigations he was handling in 2016 by the inspector general. That will be the accountability. That’s what history will remember about Jim Comey.”
The discussion concluded with Chaffetz asking Trey Gowdy whether he plans to apologize to James Comey.
“What temperature is it in Hell right now!?” the former congressman replied. “Is it snowing? When it snows in hell, you let me know. Why would I apologize to somebody who has been dinged on both of the major investigations by a guy like Michael Horowitz, who is hardly a Republican!?“
