Former congressman Trey Gowdy will not represent President Donald Trump in the impeachment fight.
The former Republican lawmaker is officially back at Fox News after talks to join Trump’s legal team fell through. Gowdy confirmed to McClatchy that he would not be working for the president.
“The president has good lawyers and more importantly good facts. He does not need another lawyer added to his team. He needs the trial to begin and end,” Gowdy said in an email.
Gowdy won’t join Trump’s team
After leaving Congress in 2019, Gowdy went back to his old law firm and later became a Fox contributor. Speculation began brewing in October that he was seeking a position with Trump when his contract with Fox ran out, the Washington Examiner reported.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow said that Gowdy would be joining the team that month, but President Trump pointed to lobbying restrictions that would have kept Gowdy from working for Trump until January 2020. When Gowdy returned to Fox News as a contributor in December, his plans appeared to have gone kaput — and it looks now that they have indeed fallen through.
The former Republican lawmaker was spotted recently golfing with Trump at the president’s Mar-A-Lago resort, but not to audition for a legal role, it appears, although he may get some informal adviser role, McClatchy speculated.
In an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in October, Gowdy said that he didn’t know whether he would represent Trump in January.
“I don’t represent the president as of today. I don’t know what if anything will exist in January. It may be over. My sense is the president needs folks that can represent him now before the House, the Senate and indirectly through television shows and print media,” Gowdy said.
Gowdy back at Fox
Back in October, Trump called Gowdy a “terrific guy” and Sekulow called him a “great asset,” citing his legal background. A former federal prosecutor, Gowdy cultivated a reputation for being a hard-hitting questioner in the Benghazi hearings, and his commentary on the Robert Mueller investigation and the FBI spying scandal evolved from deferential to highly critical of the Department of Justice.
Gowdy has taken a harsh tack toward Trump’s impeachment, which he has attacked as a baseless sham.
“If the trial were today, the president would win. And I don’t think he’d lose a single Republican senator and he might pick up one Democrat,” Gowdy told Fox. “So if you have the jury and you know how they’re going to rule, go ahead and get it over with. And then the president can say whatever he wants to after the trial is over.”
But if Gowdy does defend Trump, it seems, it will be in the capacity of an analyst.
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