Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee joins 'The Story' for reaction to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's request for more time to review the Comey memos for possible classified information.





MARTHA MACCALLUM: What do you think about that given the fact that James Comey said there was -- there was nothing classified in those memos?



REP. TREY GOWDY, R-SOUTH CAROLINA: I wish he had shared that advice with Jim Comey before he went on national television and recalled every conversation he's ever had with President Trump. So, I don't want the drama. I want the documents.







I’ve actually read them, Martha. I read them months ago.



MACCALLUM: Yes.



GOWDY: Which is why I think it's really important that you get to see them and your viewers get to see them.



Look, Comey is talking about them. He included it in his Senate testimony. He’s talking a lot about them.



MACCALLUM: Yes.



GOWDY: Well, everyone should know what exactly he memorialized after his conversations with the president.



MACCALLUM: And as you say, you are one of the few people who has actually read these memos. Is there anything classified in there? Is there anything top-secret in there?



GOWDY: I can think of two sentences in all the memos I read that would be appropriately redacted. But having said that, DOJ can redact whatever they want. If they think it's part of an ongoing probe or somehow is classified, what I’m most interested in, which is what Comey is talking about, there's no need for that to be classified.



So, Comey gets to talk about it, but no one else does and that’s just not fair to your viewers and it’s not fair to the president, frankly.



MACCALLUM: All right. So, when you take a look at some of what he has been saying from all of this, let's play the sound bite from the interview where he gives his reasoning for why he did not convene a grand jury in the Hillary Clinton case.



(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)



GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS HOST: To those who say you should have brought Hillary Clinton before a grand jury?



JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: We would prefer with the subject of an investigation to do an informal interview, a lot more flexibility there. They’re still required to tell the truth.



(END VIDEO CLIP)



MACCALLUM: Your thoughts?



GOWDY: He’s right, you can’t lie, but that would come as really interesting legal counsel to all of the people who have been hauled in front of grand jury's that the FBI prefers to do it another way.



MACCALLUM: Yes. I’m sure they all prepare a more flexible venue than Hillary Clinton got.



GOWDY: Well, I’ll tell you what they’d like. They’d love to have Cheryl Mills and all the other potential fact witnesses sitting in there while you're being interviewed. I have never heard of that before. So, he’s -- what he means by flexibility, I think the right word is "unprecedented". It’s never been done before.



MACCALLUM: Yes. I mean, I would love for him to be pressed on that question of what exactly he means by flexibility and why it would get the FBI to their ends of determining whether or not there was any wrongdoing in that case.



I want to draw your attention to something else that came out on Friday and the inspector general's report with regard to Andrew McCabe. And it goes to the question of whether or not James Comey is in any sort of trouble for leaking to his reporter friend, which he mentioned in the introduction here. And here is what it says in the I.G. report with regards to Andrew McCabe.



It says: McCabe argues that Comey, quote, would have every incentive to distance himself from this disclosure. It goes on to say: due to McCabe's belief that the OGI, the inspector general, is reviewing Comey's disclosure of other information to the media.



So, Andrew McCabe apparently is under the impression that Comey is part of the inspector general’s investigation.



GOWDY: I wouldn’t be surprised if he were. I mean, Michael Horowitz is looking at all of what happened in 2016 and there were lots of leaks. I mean, Comey gave one of his memos to a law professor. I think Horowitz is looking at everything in 2016, and anyone at the bureau who made an unauthorized leak should take note of what happened to Andy McCabe.



MACCALLUM: So, is that potentially perilous for James Comey who as you pointed out is telling his story, I think he’s got 11 interviews coming up in the next 10 or 12 days?



GOWDY: I think what's most perilous for Jim Comey, quite frankly, Martha, is he's written a book about morality and ethics and truth, and he’s engaged in more relativism I think than any book author I have seen in a long time.



Now, keep in mind, he says President Trump lied. He’s therefore unfit for office.



But he’s really proud of the fact that his wife and daughter supported the other candidate who also has trouble with the truth and then when it comes to Andy McCabe, he is a victim.



MACCALLUM: Yes.



GOWYD: So, all three engaged in the same conduct. Ones unfit to be president, one he hopes is the president and the other his friend and a victim. That's relativism. So, that is antithetical to ethics.



MACCALLUM: And he makes it very clear from the get-go that all of his decisions were made with the assumption that Hillary would win, that he framed his decision in that pattern, which I can't understand why that was relevant to any of the work that he would have been doing and it begs the question how would he have done things differently if he thought the other outcome of President Trump was going to be the case, none of which should have any bearing on what he's doing.



I want to ask you about a memo that Mark Meadows has sent to you, asking to clarify whether or not some of the newer revelations in these Strzok-Page text messages point to greater coordination that has been admitted between the FBI and the DOJ on what they were going to find with regard to Hillary Clinton.



GOWDY: Yes, Mark has done great work and so is Johnny Radcliffe and others. I’ve read Mark's letter. He shared it with me before it went public, which I appreciate him doing. I’m going to send it to the inspector general and I’m going to the department and the FBI, to the extent that there is an allegation that false testimony was given, Congress is not the entity to investigate that. I think it fits most neatly within what Horowitz is doing now which is looking at how -- just how unprecedented this investigation was in 2016.