GOWDY DISPUTES TRUMP’S ‘SPY’ CLAIM, SUPPORTS FBI
GOP’s Gowdy rejects president’s ‘spy’ claim, defends FBI probe
Washington — A senior House Republican briefed by the FBI on its Russia probe is disputing President Donald Trump’s allegation that the agency spied on his 2016 campaign for political purposes.
Rep. Trey Gowdy told “CBS This Morning” and Fox News there is no evidence of FBI misconduct or that the agency planted a “spy” in Trump’s campaign. His statements appeared to contradict the president, who has said the FBI planted a “spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win.”
Gowdy told Fox on Tuesday that after receiving classified briefing on the subject “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do” in acting on information.
Washington — There is no evidence that the FBI planted a “spy” on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, a senior House Republican said Wednesday, contradicting Trump’s repeated insistence that the agency inserted a “spy for political reasons and to help Crooked Hillary win.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and a longtime Trump supporter, was briefed last week by the Justice Department and FBI following reports that investigators relied on a U.S. government informant in their probe of Russian election meddling.
“I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump,” Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, told Fox News on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Gowdy said he had “never heard the term ‘spy’ used” and did not see evidence of it.
“Informants are used all day, every day by law enforcement,” he told “CBS This Morning.”
Asked about Gowdy’s comments, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president “still has concerns about whether or not the FBI acted inappropriately having people in his campaign.”
Sanders declined to say who in the campaign the president might suspect of providing information to the FBI. She said Trump also has concerns in general about the conduct of the FBI, citing the firing of former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“There are a number of things that have been reported on and that show, I think not just for the president but for a number of Americans, a large cause for concern and we’d like to see this fully looked into,” Sanders said.
Gowdy’s comments that undermine the president’s claims are particularly striking because of his role as a powerful GOP watchdog who took on Democrat Hillary Clinton in his committee’s investigation into the 2012 attack on an American mission in Benghazi, Libya, while she was secretary of state. The probe unearthed the existence of Clinton’s private email server, which triggered an FBI inquiry and crippled her 2016 presidential campaign against Trump.
Trump has repeatedly pointed to, and at times embellished, reports that a longtime U.S. government informant approached members of his 2016 campaign during the presidential election in a possible bid to glean intelligence on Russian efforts to sway the election.