Trey Gowdy said William Barr has nothing to worry about after the attorney general was held in criminal contempt by the House on Wednesday.
“Barr is ostensibly being held in contempt for not turning over a document he has no legal obligation to turn over,” the former South Carolina Republican congressman said on Fox News.
Gowdy hearkened back several years to when President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, was held in contempt by the House after refusing to turn over documents related to the botched Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation.
“In fact, it would be against the law to do so. The counterargument, is you guys held Eric Holder in contempt. We did, 400 days after we asked for the documents,” Gowdy added. “Here’s the good thing that [Commerce Secretary] Wilbur Ross and Eric Holder and William Barr have in common right now: Nobody cares what Congress does. What we saw yesterday — they can’t even enforce their own House rules against their own members.”
He was referring to parliamentary chaos on the House floor on Tuesday.
Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said there “used to be a stigma” attached to being held in contempt, but “there ain’t no more, so I would tell Bill Barr, ‘Your reputation is an incredible lawyer is intact. Don’t give it another thought.'”
The Democrat-led House voted to hold Barr and Ross in contempt of Congress for failing to provide information and testimony related to a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. The vote was 230 to 198. No Republicans voted for the contempt citation, and four Democrats voted against it.
Wednesday’s contempt citation will be referred to the Justice Department, where it is highly unlikely a criminal case against the two men will be pursued.
