By Charles Creitz | Fox News
Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy responded Thursday to the firestorm over Sen. Rand Paul’s attempt to ask a question that invoked the alleged name of the Trump-Ukraine phone call whistleblower.
Paul’s question was rejected by Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, who moved on to take a question from Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., instead.
Gowdy, a Fox News contributor, told “The Story” that he finds both the side that wants the whistleblower to testify and the side that finds the whistleblower irrelevant to be wrong.
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“We make 4-year-olds testify in court,” Gowdy told host Martha MacCallum. “We make women who have been sexually assaulted testify in court. So the notion that, if you are a relevant witness, that somehow you could escape being cross-examined, we don’t do it for anyone else, why would we do it for this whistle-blower?”
“On the other hand,” Gowdy went on, “The reason you don’t ever hear me ever talking about the whistleblower is I don’t need him. I’ve got the transcript” of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Why do I care what someone who overheard the conversation felt about it or thought about it or believed about it? I can read it for myself,” he said. “So, yes, the whistleblower is relevant, but he’s not material. There are 20 witnesses that I think would be more probative than a whistleblower of a transcript that you and I can read for ourselves.”
Gowdy also said the way to prevent leaks of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders in the future is to shrink the number of people privy to each call and pondered whether such a group could be reduced simply to the secretary of state and an expert in the subject matter being discussed.
