Former Rep. Trey Gowdy Harold (Trey) Watson GowdySunday shows preview: Election integrity dominates as Nov. 3 nears Tim Scott invokes Breonna Taylor, George Floyd in Trump convention speech Sunday shows preview: Republicans gear up for national convention, USPS debate continues in Washington MORE (R-S.C.), the onetime chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, defended the use of private congressional hearings and said he instead took issue with the leaks from the House’s impeachment proceedings.

CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday played a clip of Gowdy in 2018 describing public House hearings as a “circus” and a “freakshow.” She then asked Gowdy whether he still believed that.

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“One hundred percent,” Gowdy said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” adding, “I’m a rule follower. I threw a Republican out of a hearing because he was not a member of the committee. If you’re going to have private investigations with unlimited time for questioning and cross-examining witnesses, that’s a good thing.”

.@TGowdySC says he still believes in the role of private testimony "100%" amid GOP outrage over Democrats' closed-door hearings as part of the impeachment inquiry pic.twitter.com/BMfWZb3MEM — Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 27, 2019

“What’s not a good thing is to have selective leaks where you pick one sentence out of an eight-hour deposition,” Gowdy said.

“There were no leaks with [former special counsel Robert] Mueller,” he added, whereas House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffSchiff to subpoena top DHS official, alleges whistleblower deposition is being stonewalled Schiff claims DHS is blocking whistleblower's access to records before testimony GOP lawmakers distance themselves from Trump comments on transfer of power MORE (D-Calif.) “uses an opening statement to give a parody” and “lies about a whistleblower.”

Brennan pressed Gowdy on testimony by diplomats that the White House had conditioned aid to Ukraine on investigations of interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and former Vice President Joe Biden Joe BidenFormer Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick Bloomberg rolls out M ad buy to boost Biden in Florida MORE’s son and asked whether that conduct constituted an impeachable offense.

Gowdy responded that there was nothing improper about investigating election interference, saying, “If a Democrat did that, we’d be adding something to Mount Rushmore.” In response, Brennan noted that allegations that the Democratic National Committee’s hacked server is currently in Ukraine have been debunked.