https://youtube.com/watch?v=zViQ46y7MpQ
On Sunday morning’s Meet the Press, House Select Committee on Benghazi chairman Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) responded to National Review Online’s Andrew McCarthy, who wrote last week:
Just as Mrs. Clinton did not turn over any of her private e-mails until the State Department finally asked for them, Gowdy, by his own account, did not issue a subpoena to address a scandal he has long known about until the scandal became public. That in itself is a scandal.
“Essentially,” said host Chuck Todd, “the question is, if you knew about this private email issue back in August of last year, why did you take so long to subpoena and get more information now?”
“Well, Chuck, the power of subpoena is only as good as the power to compel compliance,” responded Gowdy, “and in my previous job as a prosecutor — and I think the author of that article is a former prosecutor, also — you had great tools to compel compliance. In the legislative branch, you do not. So we had been working since August to secure access to all of [Hillary Clinton’s] relevant documents and e-mails.”
Continued Gowdy: “Subpoena is kind of the final thing that you do when all else fails. The State Department told us they wanted a different kind of relationship with us, and we took them at their word. What we later found is, it was kind of a one-sided relationship. The State Department is not very cooperative, and when we realized that — and I give credit to the New York Times reporter; it wasn’t our committee, it was a reporter [who broke the story] — then we issued a subpoena.”