Trey Gowdy Quotes

In my capacity as a board member of the OfS, I hope to be impartial, objective, and fair.

Counter-corruption agencies cannot make a difference unless they are independent of the government actors they are supposed to monitor, restrain, and punish.

To be objective you don't have to be an adversary. You don't have to be a bulldog tearing down everything. To make the system of checks and balances and separation of powers work, you don't have to be on their ass all the time.

What are we to do? Sit back and let the President police himself?

Independence sounds good in theory, but in practice, it is mutually exclusive with accountability. The more independence you give a prosecutor, the less you make that prosecutor accountable to the public and regular checks and balances.

I believe investigative agencies should be run in an autonomous manner, and there shouldn't be any interference from the government's side.

This House cannot function without an open, accountable, and independent ethics process; and the molestation of that process by the majority is an abuse of power that cannot stand.

If you're going to be in the business of news and telling people the truth... you've got to be honest. You've got to have the same rules for yourself as you do for everyone else.

I know that I and my office acted with the highest integrity as an independent inspector general should act.

I came not from within the administration, and it was clear and clear in our discussions and no one asked otherwise that I would lead this the way I thought best and I would speak the truth as we found it.

The BBC should not have a cheerleader. It should have somebody who runs the organisation in the interests of the public and that should be a chairman.

Thus, the Archivist must display at all times scrupulous independence and a devotion to the laws and principles which govern the responsibilities of the office.

Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law. The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities

There is a kind of innate conflict of interest when members of congressional ethics committees are called upon to judge their colleagues.

An urgent need exists for regular and responsible Congressional scrutiny of the Central Intelligence Agency. Such scrutiny is essential… Our form of government…is based on a system of checks and balances. If this system gets seriously out of balance at any point the whole system is jeopardized and the way is opened for the growth of tyranny…CIA is freed from practically every ordinary form of Congressional check. I agree that an intelligence agency must maintain complete secrecy to be effective. However, there is a profound difference between an essential degree of secrecy to achieve a specific purpose and secrecy for the mere sake of secrecy.

Who is to guard the guards themselves? Quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

Oversight was not meant to be comfortable.

Quite as important as legislation is vigilant oversight of administration; and even more important than legislation is the instruction and guidance in political affairs which the people might receive from a body which kept all national concerns suffused in a broad daylight of discussion .... The informing functions of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function. The argument is not only that a discussed and interrogated administration is the only pure and efficient administration, but, more than that, that the only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration.

One of the things I believe strongly in is developing institutions - legal, press, bureaucracies, academies - that are rooted in the pursuit of impartial truth. That aren't simply just bent to partisan ends or are corrupted for the powerful or for other ulterior motives.

When an issue is so fraught with partisanship, a special counsel provides some modicum of transparency and accountability rather the the veil of politics.

The lesson is the importance of never becoming untethered to oversight and accountability.

If you're in government, that's one of the one things you have to do is to always avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Our job in Congress is to follow the facts of any investigation wherever they lead.

No reasonable American believes that someone can investigate their own boss.

In everything we do, as long as I have anything to say about it, we're going to follow the facts independently, wherever they may lead, to whomever they may lead, no matter who likes it.