Yes. And as crass and cynical that is, I do believe that it was his intent to trick people ... on orders of then-Speaker Boehner .....
Yes. And as crass and cynical that is, I do believe that it was his intent to trick people ... on orders of then-Speaker Boehner .....
Gowdy never once stated that he had the power to indict anyone. In fact, he has stated publicly, on multiple occasions, that his committee does not have the power to indict anyone. FoxNews and National Review both reported that, so it would be a very odd "trick" indeed to publicly come out and say "I don't have the power to indict or prosecute anyone" if you're trying to convince people that you do.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415277/dont-blame-gowdy-andrew-c-McCarthy
Here's what happened. Uneducated people ignorant of the Constitution, and who never bothered to keep themselves informed during the dozens of Congressional hearings during the prior decades that likewise did not indict anyone, simply assumed, on their own (or after reading comments by similarly ill-informed people) that Gowdy's Committee could throw people in jail.
I can tell you I've read people on FR saying that for years, then someone will patiently pipe up and say "no, they don't have that power", and they're ignored. And why are they ignored? Because people had created this fantasy in their heads that "Hillary will get thrown in jail", and they simply don't want to believe it when someone tells them that isn't true.
It's not the fault of Gowdy or anyone else that people assume Congress has powers it doesn't. It is their fault.
By the way, it should be pointed out that though the embassy was attacked in 2012, the Committee wasn't even created until the summer of 2014, and didn't hold it's first hearings (because of the recess) until September 2014. Prior to that, there was a Senate Committee and an internal committee that whitewashed the whole thing.