Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz demanded that the FBI be defunded and its agents criminally indicted after a report found that the bureau lacked evidence to launch an investigation into former President Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia in 2016.
Trump-era special council John Durham on Monday produced a 300-page report summing up his four-year review of the FBI’s actions, which found that the agency rushed into its investigation, relied too heavily on raw and unconfirmed intelligence, and “willfully ignored” or rationalized away information that did not support its collusion theory.
Gaetz, a staunch Trump ally, ripped into the bureau following the release of the report, which he touted in a tweet as an “absolutely DAMNING treatise on the weaponization of the FBI against President Trump.”
During an interview on Newsmax Monday night, Gaetz accused the FBI of becoming “the enforcement wing of the Democratic Party to play offense against Trump,” and argued that the agency should face harsh consequences for its wrongdoings.
“I think we have to deauthorize, defang and defund many of these authorities and entities and different task forces that actually converted the just and righteous act of protecting our country with the desire to have a particular political candidate win or lose,” the lawmaker said.
For years, Trump and his supporters had claimed that Durham’s probe would uncover the “crime of the century.”
But despite the damning findings, it has resulted in just one guilty plea from ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted in 2020 to altering an e-mail in order to get a surveillance warrant against Trump campaign aide Carter Page renewed.
Two other criminal cases to have emerged from Durham’s probe that were brought to trial ended in speedy acquittals.
Gaetz fumed that the lone guilty verdict against the disgraced FBI employee, who he said has already resumed his law practice in Washington DC, was insufficient.
“If that had been a Republican operation — an operation to help a Republican candidate — it wouldn’t have ended in a report: it would have ended with real significant indictments,” the congressman added.
Gaetz said Durham’s review should result in “firings” and a bipartisan reform of the FBI.
“And I think we should claw back the $325 million that Nancy Pelosi had gifted for the new FBI headquarters in the DC area,” he added.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) agreed with Gaetz that the FBI should have its funding slashed and claimed in a Fox News interview that there was a “double standard” for Republicans and Democrats.
Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday that he has invited Durham to testify before his panel next week to further discuss his findings.
Durham, the former US Attorney in Connecticut, was appointed by Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, in 2019 to scrutinize FBI’s controversial collusion probe.
The FBI has issued a statement acknowledging “missteps” in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the theorized Trump-Russia ties, but claimed that the agency has already implemented “dozens of corrective actions.”
“Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect,” the bureau added.