On Face the Nation, Rep. Trey Gowdy spoke today about the upcoming potential Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over allegations by Christine Blasey Ford against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and the potential for an FBI investigation. Gowdy wanted to know what exactly the FBI would be investigating.

Host John Dickerson asked Gowdy about Ford’s previously expressed hope for a “neutral fact-finding” on the allegations.

“I’m a big fan of the FBI, John, but they don’t investigate sex assault cases, there are very, very few federal sex assault cases,” Gowdy said. “So, my first question would be, the FBI to investigate what? There’s no crime scene to process, there’s no forensics to evaluate.”

“What the FBI could do is go interview Dr. Ford, and interview Judge Kavanaugh,” he continued. “But they’ve already interviewed Judge Kavanaugh and even if they did interview Dr. Ford, she still has to testify. So the only role I can see the bureau playing is identifying other witnesses that may have knowledge– some of that’s already been done by Dr. Ford. Judge Kavanaugh’s defense is that he wasn’t there so you wouldn’t expect him to produce witnesses.”

“I don’t know what people expect the FBI to do, they’re not human polygraphs,” he concluded. “So they can’t tell us who is telling the truth.”

Dickerson responded by saying that the President could order the investigation even though they don’t normally investigate sexual assault cases, Trump could order that order to get “an accurate record.”

In the first question, Dickerson described any potential FBI investigation as a “neutral fact-finding” one. He said again after Gowdy’s answer that it wouldn’t be about investigating a sex assault case but getting “an accurate record.” He then said “the thinking is the FBI is a neutral fact-finder here,” without the partisanship they could get “some of the basic facts down.” Then Dickerson said “it’s not just about finding information for the general record.”

Gowdy said “I have no issues with the FBI taking a second, third, eighth look, if that’s what it takes to find out what happened and to fully air all the facts. I just want people to have realistic expectations”

“What the FBI can do is go interview Dr. Ford, which is what the senators are planning on doing this week. They can interview Judge Kavanaugh, which is what the senators are doing,” said Gowdy. “But they can’t then come in and repeat back what either of those witnesses say. You can’t determine credibility unless you actually hear from the witness herself, and himself.”

Watch the clip above, courtesy of CBS.

[Featured image via screengrab]

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