Rep. Trey Gowdy plans to retire
Lawmaker aims to return to work in the justice system
WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., announced Wednesday that he will retire at the end of the current term and leave politics to return to work in the justice system.
A former prosecutor, Gowdy rose to prominence as chairman of a special House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s role in the State Department’s response.
“I will not be filing for reelection to Congress nor seeking any other political or elected office; instead I will be returning to the justice system,” Gowdy said in a statement.
“Whatever skills I may have are better utilized in a courtroom than in Congress, and I enjoy our justice system more than our political system,” he said. “As I look back on my career, it is the jobs that both seek and reward fairness that are most rewarding.”
The special panel’s discovery of Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business became a significant issue in the 2016 presidential election and prompted an FBI review of her actions that reverberated until the final days of the campaign.
Gowdy’s northern South Carolina district is heavily Republican and includes the city of Greenville.
It was unclear what role Gowdy might seek in the justice system. One of the judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals took “senior status” on Tuesday, creating a vacancy on the bench.
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers praised Gowdy as a model public servant.
Gowdy, who won his seat in 2010 by ousting moderate Republican Bob Inglis, had talked about retiring for years.
In 2016, he waited until weeks before the election filing deadline to declare his candidacy for reelection.