Harold Watson "Trey" Gowdy III (born August 22, 1964) is an American television news personality, former politician, and former federal prosecutor who served as the U.S. representative for from 2011 to 2019. His district included much of the Upstate region of South Carolina, including Greenville and Spartanburg. Before his congressional career, Gowdy served as a federal prosecutor in the District of South Carolina from 1994 to 2000 and then as the solicitor (district attorney) for South Carolina's Seventh Judicial Circuit, comprising Spartanburg and Cherokee counties from 2000 to 2010. From 2014 to 2016, Gowdy chaired the United States House Select Committee on Benghazi which was partly responsible for discovering the existence of Hillary Clinton's private email server. His investigative committee spent over two and a half years and $7.8 million investigating the events surrounding the 2012 Benghazi attack, ultimately not finding evidence of specific wrong-doing by then-Secretary of State Clinton. Gowdy pressed for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. Beginning in June 2017 he chaired the House Oversight Committee. On January 31, 2018, Gowdy announced that he would not seek re-election in 2018 and that he intended to pursue a legal career instead of politics. He has since joined the law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, and also joined Fox News as a contributor. He was promoted in 2021 to host Fox News Primetime and then Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy. Early life and education Gowdy was born on August 22, 1964, in Greenville, South Carolina. He is the son of Novalene (Evans) and Harold Watson "Hal" Gowdy Jr., MD. He grew up in Spartanburg, where as a young man he delivered newspapers for the local daily and worked at the community market. Gowdy graduated from Spartanburg High School in 1982 and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Baylor University in 1986. While at Baylor he was a member of Kappa Omega Tau. He graduated Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1989. Legal career Gowdy worked as judicial law clerk for John P. Gardner on the South Carolina Court of Appeals as well as for federal judge G. Ross Anderson of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. He then went into private practice at Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough in Greenville, South Carolina before being appointed as an assistant