Trey Gowdy Says His Defense Of FBI During Russia Investigation Was A ‘Mistake’
Former Republican South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy is in hot water over past remarks praising the FBI’s investigation of President Donald Trump.
Gowdy admitted during an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight that he had been wrong in “relying on the word of the FBI and the DOJ” during hearings on the Trump-Russia probe, saying he realized his mistake after reviewing the documents related to the opening of the investigation.
Host Tucker Carlson began by showing footage from two years ago, where Gowdy can be heard defending the FBI’s handling of the Trump–Russia collusion investigation.
Carlson played a clip of from May 2018, where Gowdy — while still a member of Congress — saying after being briefed that he was “more convinced 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.”
When Carlson then asked, “do you still feel that way?”
Gowdy replied “oh gosh, no.”
“I made a lot of mistakes in life — relying on briefings, and not insisting on the documents,” Gowdy explained, saying he changed his mind “about three weeks” after his public comments.
“I went to the Department of Justice. I sat there for four hours. That’s when I saw that Peter Strzok actually initiated and approved Crossfire Hurricane. That’s when I saw the exculpatory information on George Papadopoulos. That’s when I saw for the very first time that it was the Trump campaign mentioned in that predicate document,” Gowdy elaborated, adding that the officials called to testify had been “telling us all along, ‘Trump’s not the target, the campaign’s not the target.”
“So yes, my mistake was relying on the word of the FBI and the DOJ and not insisting on the documents. Luckily it took me three weeks to correct that mistake,” Gowdy stated.
https://conservativebrief.com/trey-gowdy-russia-21483/