House Oversight Committee Chairman and House Intelligence Committee member Trey Gowdy (R-SC), who sat in on a DOJ briefing last Thursday on the FBI's use of a confidential informant, says the FBI acted exactly as it should have.
“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,” he said in an interview on Fox News. He added that the information also suggested that the effort had “nothing to do with Donald Trump.”
Gowdy’s comments are a significant pushback against Trump and his allies who have contended that the FBI’s use of an informant amounted to explosive political proof that the Obama administration embedded a spy in his campaign — an accusation that hasn’t been backed up by any available evidence.
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“It looks to me like the FBI was doing what President Trump said: ‘I want you to do, find it out,’” Gowdy said. He added: “President Trump himself in the Comey memos said, ‘If anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it.’ Sounds to me like that was exactly what the FBI did.”
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Gowdy also urged Trump to testify before Mueller, noting that all of the information he’s seen so far suggests that, so far, the president is not a target of the inquiry.
“If he were my client … I would say, if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you need to sit down with Mueller,” he said.
Gowdy said that Trump's repeated statements about a “spy” in his campaign was creating another opportunity for Mueller to question his facts.
During a rally in Nashville, TN Tuesday night, President Trump repeated that same completely unsubstantiated accusation, telling the crowd, "They had people infiltrating our campaign."
FBI was right to deploy informant, senior GOP lawmaker says (Politico)