Gowdy: McCarthy ‘screwed up’ on Benghazi remarks

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was wrong to link the House Select Committee on Benghazi to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers, the panel’s chairman said in a Wednesday interview.

“Well, he is a friend, but my first reaction is, ‘Kevin, you’re wrong,’” Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe. “Kevin has apologized as profusely as a human being can apologize.

{mosads}“What I tell folks back home is, ‘I don’t care how many times you put an ear piece in your ear and looked into a camera, you still screwed up, and Kevin screwed up,’” he added of the house majority leader.

Gowdy argued on Wednesday that his committee’s work is focused on addressing the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on a U.S. facility in Libya and not Clinton’s White House run.

“Kevin is not on the Benghazi Committee,” he said. “We’ve had three public hearings and I’ve never mentioned her name.

“If you look at what we’ve done, the 50-some-odd witnesses we’ve already interviewed, not a single one has been named Clinton,” Gowdy said. “The 50,000 documents that we have accessed, that no other committee has accessed, less than 5 percent has anything to do with her.”

McCarthy’s comments gave an opening to Democrats, who have long seen the panel as a partisan effort to take down Clinton. They also annoyed Republicans, who feared the remarks undermined preparations for Clinton’s testimony on Oct. 22. 

Gowdy said he plans on personally questioning Clinton.

“All members of our committee are going to question Secretary Clinton and we were working on it as late as 11:00 p.m. last night,” he said.

McCarthy’s comments have raised concerns about his bid to replace Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) following his exit from Congress at month’s end.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) are now contesting McCarthy’s ascendancy to the speakership position.