Fox News Drops Trey Gowdy As Contributor After He Joins Donald Trump’s Legal Team

Ted Johnson

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Fox News Channel has dropped former Rep. Trey Gowdy as a contributor after reports that he is joining President Donald Trump’s legal team as outside counsel for the impeachment inquiry.

A Fox News spokesperson said Gowdy “has been terminated and is no longer a contributor.”

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Gowdy joined Fox News in January, after leaving Congress after four terms. He was already well known to viewers as the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, tasked with investigating what happened during the attack on an American consulate in Libya in 2012. The highest profile moment came in 2015, when Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time of the attack, testified for 11 hours before the committee.

Fox News’ Outnumbered reported on Gowdy’s new role, and co-host Melissa Francis used past tense to make clear that he was no longer a contributor to the network.

When he was still in Congress and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Gowdy did receive some harsh criticism from Trump’s team when he defended the FBI in its handling of the Russia investigation. Rudy Giuliani told CNN last year that Gowdy was “drinking the Kool-Aid.” Giuliani is one of Trump’s personal lawyers and a central figure in the impeachment inquiry.

But the sentiment toward Gowdy apparently has changed as he has been critical of the Democrats’ investigation.

Last week, Gowdy told Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is leading the impeachment inquiry, was “mishandling the investigation.”

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