Trey Gowdy won’t join Trump’s legal team. ‘He doesn’t need another lawyer’
Amid confusion late last year regarding his status on President Donald Trump’s legal team, former Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy said Thursday he has no plans to formally assist the White House in its effort to defend the president in the Senate’s upcoming impeachment trial.
“The president has good lawyers and more importantly good facts,” Gowdy said in an email to McClatchy. “He does not need another lawyer added to his team. He needs the trial to begin and end.”
The statement ends months of speculation and intrigue in Washington about whether Gowdy could be persuaded to return to the fray after leaving Congress in January 2019, vowing he was done with politics for good, to resume private law practice in South Carolina.
Gowdy was spotted golfing and dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla., this past weekend — a sign the four-term congressman may yet act as an informal adviser to the administration as it braces for the next phase of congressional efforts to remove the president from office.
Administration officials were eyeing Gowdy’s involvement back in the fall as the Democratic-controlled House was heading towards its December vote to impeach Trump for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, another former South Carolina GOP congressman, personally vouched for his close friend Gowdy’s legal expertise, strong Capitol Hill connections and knack for messaging on cable news.
Trump was sold, and by early October, Gowdy appeared poised to join the president’s impeachment legal team as an outside attorney.
“Trey’s command of the law is well known and his service on Capitol Hill will be a great asset as a member of our team,” said Trump’s personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, in a statement at the time.
However, that move would have required Gowdy to give up his new law practice and his contract as a Fox News contributor to adhere to ethics rules governing members of Congress in their first year out of office. Gowdy was unwilling to make such a trade.
But Gowdy — who first became widely known for his leadership of a partisan congressional investigation into the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya — remains closely connected to several high-ranking Republicans with direct ties to the administration.
In addition to Mulvaney, Gowdy speaks regularly to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, who as a member of both the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees was one of the most forceful Trump surrogates during the chamber’s impeachment proceedings.
Gowdy also remains in touch with South Carolina GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott. Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is one of Trump’s closest allies.
And while there was a lapse in his contract with Fox during the time he appeared headed to the White House, Gowdy is now back on the network as a reliable conservative voice on Trump’s favorite channel.
This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 4:04 PM with the headline "Trey Gowdy won’t join Trump’s legal team. ‘He doesn’t need another lawyer’."
