‘That was a leading question’: Ex-DHS chief wrecks Trey Gowdy’s partisan spin by refusing to ‘argue’ with him
Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday called out Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) for asking a partisan “leading question” that suggested Democrats were to partially blame for Russia’s hacking of the U.S. election.
“I don’t want to beat a dead horse,” Gowdy told Johnson during a House Intelligence Committee hearing. “The DNC never turned the [hacked] server over to law enforcement.”
“They weren’t going to give you the server,” he continued. “So, if you’re investigating from a law enforcement standpoint the hacking by a foreign hostile government, wouldn’t you want the server? Wouldn’t that help you — number one — identify who the attacker was? If memory serves me, this was early in the summer of 2016 when we learned of the DNC hacks.”
“So, if they had turned the server over to either you or [then-FBI Director James Comey], maybe we would have known more. And maybe there would have been more for you to report.”
After his short speech, Gowdy finally got around to his question.
“Why would the victim of a crime not turn over a server to an intelligence community or to law enforcement?” he said.
“I’m not going to argue with you, sir,” Johnson replied, deflating Gowdy’s loaded question. “That was a leading question. And I’ll agree to be led.”
Watch the video below from C-SPAN.