Representative Trey Gowdy made a surprising announcement on Wednesday. The South Carolina Republican is quitting politics and will not seek re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Before this announcement four term Representative Trey Gowdy was a rising and controversial Republican star.
He's chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, a member of the House Intelligence Committee which is examining Russian interference in the 2016 election.
And Gowdy chaired the House investigation of Benghazi which eventually discovered then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.
Prior to politics Gowdy served more than a dozen years as a federal prosecutor or state solicitor.
A staunch Republican representing Greenville-Spartanburg in South Carolina's dark red 4th Congressional District, his re-election this year seemed all but certain. Instead, Gowdy says, he's retiring from politics altogether.
In a statement Gowdy wrote, "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."
Gowdy is one of at least eight GOP congressmen to call it quits just before the 2018 election kicks off.