Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy responded Monday to former FBI attorney Lisa Page after she broke her silence in an interview with The Daily Beast.
“When she says things need to be put in context, the word ‘loathsome’ really doesn’t need to be put in context,” Gowdy said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.” “And when you say somebody will be a national security disaster, that doesn’t need to be put in context.”
Page spoke exclusively to The Daily Beast in a highly sympathetic profile published late Sunday, saying that President Trump’s remarks had forced her to speak out.
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” Page said. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
Page carried on an extramarital affair with former FBI head of counterintelligence Peter Strzok and exchanged anti-Trump text messages with him.
Gowdy said the texts prove both Page and Strzok were “biased against” Trump.
“These texts have been out there for, what, almost two years now? So your viewers are smart enough to read them and know that the lead FBI agent in the lead-up, your lawyer, were both biased against Donald Trump,” Gowdy told MacCallum. “That’s who was investigating him in 2016. I’m not sure how she thinks context is going to improve that.”
“Yep, she does have freedom of speech and we have the freedom to reject what she said and tell her we don’t believe it,” Gowdy added.
Gowdy called the Democrats’ reaction to Page and Strzok a “double standard” compared to their treatment of President Trump during the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
“So to Democrats, all’s well that ends well if it’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. But if you get the aid and there’s no investigation, that’s not enough. It still may be impeachable. Just because we didn’t like your process,” Gowdy said. “That’s duplicity, it’s a double standard. And that’s why the American people, I think, are completely unmoved thus far by the impeachment hearings of chairman [Adam] Schiff.”
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The former congressman believes Democrats are continuing with impeachment as a way to take back control of the Senate in 2020.
“This is not about removing Donald Trump from office because they know they’re not going to be successful, “Gowdy said. “It’s about shifting it to the Senate where you can put people like [Senators] Cory Gardner [of Colorado] and Martha McSally [of Arizona] and Thom Tillis [of North Carolina] in a really tough spot.”
“If they could win the Senate, even if they lose the White House in 2020, then he [Trump] is a neutered president,” Gowdy added. “And I’ve always thought this is much more about the Senate than it is removing someone from office because they’re not going to get a conviction in the Senate trial.”
