The FBI was working, under leadership that at the time was appointed by Democrats, to undermine President Donald Trump with “secret, insidious and downright evil operations,” a U.S. senator is charging.
And the result was that they “almost took down our government.”
A report posted by Fox News explains the comments come from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chief of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
And they were based on newly public records of what he called a years-long campaign by “law enforcement and intelligence officials” to target Trump and Republicans.
Many of those operations already have been revealed, including the Hurricane Crossfire scheme in which officials falsely alleged that the Trump campaign in 2016 colluded with Russia, a lie that clouded Trump’s campaign, first election and first term in office.
The Democrats also engaged in lawfare, creating a number of civil and criminal cases against Trump that now mostly have fallen to pieces.
Now Grassley has released unclassified emails among FBI agents involved in that “investigation.”
Grassley charges that the emails, including those involving ex-FBI agent Kevin Gounaud who wanted an investigation into Elon Musk over his budget-cutting work at the Department of Government Efficiency, showed “Deep State” was trying to undermine the president, the report said.
“The previous Democrat administrations under Obama and Biden conducted secret, insidious and downright evil operations that almost took down our government,” Grassley said during an Oversight hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel. “That’s arguably worse than Watergate.”
GRASSLEY RELEASES NEW FBI EMAILS
Newly released FBI records show an agent sought to investigate Elon Musk over DOGE activity, while another repeatedly sought a role in Crossfire Hurricane. Grassley says the emails raise fresh questions about FBI case selection.#WashingtonEye pic.twitter.com/TvVtTdIS2D
— Washington Eye (@washington_EY) September 16, 2026
Grassley’s work on the Senate Judiciary Committee has resulted several times in recent years of revelations about FBI schemes such as Operation Arctic Frost and Round River that suggested a weaponization of the government by Democrats against Trump.
“The overall sustained efforts by the Deep State in the dark corners of the bureaucracy is worse than anything Trump has been accused of. At least he’s upfront and open so people can judge,” Grassley said.
The recently released emails involved Gounaud, the recently fired Walter Giardina and Timothy Thibault.
Gounaud had suggested in email a criminal investigation of Musk, a special government employee working on Trump’s effort to cut spending.
Gounaud’s complaint was that Musk announced on social media he would ask government workers to share five things they had worked on.
“Musk used a non government system (twitter) to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes. In doing so, because he is monetized (he is a majority owner of twitter) he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization model and/or advertising revenues,” Gounaud claimed. “His use of twitter in this and other instances is conceptually similar to Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server for government business.”
The documents also reveal “Giardina emailed at least seven times over the course of four weeks beginning in January 2017 asking to be assigned to Crossfire Hurricane,” the report confirmed.
And, the emails show, Giardina was in correspondence with Thibault at the time.
