I hope I’m wrong about Gowdy, but he’s all talk. He hasn’t punished one single person.”
I’m curious to learn what power Gowdy, as head of a congressional committee, has to “punish” people.
From the Republic’s earliest days, Congress has had the right to hold recalcitrant witnesses in contempt — and even imprison them — all by itself. In 1795, shortly after the Constitution was ratified, the House ordered its sergeant at arms to arrest and detain two men accused of trying to bribe members of Congress. The House held a trial and convicted one of them.
In 1821, the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s right to hold people in contempt and imprison them. Without this power, the court ruled, Congress would “be exposed to every indignity and interruption, that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may mediate against it.” Later, in a 1927 case arising from the Teapot Dome scandal, the court upheld the Senate’s arrest of the brother of a former attorney general — carried out in Ohio by the deputy sergeant at arms — for ignoring a subpoena to testify.
Heres a dc that goes into more detail. None of these steps were taken by Gowdy or anyone for that matter even when held in contempt or failing to produce evidence as in the case of Lois Lerner.