Earlier this month after five years on the House Ethics Committee, Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who made his name on the House Oversight Committee while investigating the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, stepped down from the former committee, citing his “workload” as the chair of the Oversight Committee while serving on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. Less than three weeks later, Gowdy has announced he won’t be seeking re-election in 2018:
“I will not be filing for re-election to Congress nor seeking any other political or elected office; instead I will be returning to the justice system. 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.”
In announcing that he’s quitting, Gowdy (who formerly worked as a federal prosecutor) immediately became one of the most high-profile members of Congress to decide against running for re-election later this year, and became yet another Republican committee member to leave his post. Gowdy became the chairman of the House Oversight Committee after Utah’s Jason Chaffetz (who hasn’t ruled out a return to government office) left Congress in June of last year.
You can read Gowdy’s full statement below.
There is a time to come and a time to go. This is the right time, for me, to leave politics and return to the justice system. Full statement here → pic.twitter.com/7I8AApqvs1
— Trey Gowdy (@TGowdySC) January 31, 2018