As the criminal inquiry into the FBI’s Russia investigation continues, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that the documents he’s reviewed spells “real trouble” for the agents who conducted the investigation, which found no collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government.
Meadows, speaking to Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday, said he could not update the host on the investigation, led by U.S. attorney John Durham, but that records he had reviewed did not bode well for the FBI officials responsible for the origins of the Russa investigation.
“Additional documents that I’ve been able to review say that a number of the players, the Peter Strzoks, the Andy McCabes, the James Comeys, and even others in the administration previously are in real trouble because of their willingness to participate in an unlawful act and I use the word unlawful at best, it broke all kinds of protocols and at worst people should go to jail as I mentioned previously,” Meadows said, according to The Washington Examiner.
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Meadows was interviewed after former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who helped open the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, has defended the bureau’s inquiry and argued the president was “compromised” by Russia during a media blitz for his new book.
Meadows said the documents don’t back up Strzok, who was fired from the bureau in 2018 after anti-Trump text messages he sent to a colleague came to light.
Trump has “encouraged not only declassification, but full transparency. He has nothing to hide,” Meadows said. “I can tell you, it’s real easy for Peter Strzok to go on 60 Minutes when he doesn’t have to raise his right hand and tell the truth. In all of this interview, I can tell you this. It’s not backed up by the facts. It’s not backed up by documents that I’ve seen. And ultimately his house of cards will come falling down.”
As The Daily Wire previously reported, an Inspector General report on the origins of the Russia investigation found 17 “inaccuracies and omissions” just in the FBI’s FISA warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. Among the omissions was the fact that the U.S. government knew Page “had been approved as an operational contact for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application.”
The CIA told FBI investigators in an email that Page had worked with them previously, yet an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, altered the email to remove the information pertaining to Page’s previous work with the agency. Clinesmith pleaded guilty last month to falsifying evidence, The Daily Wire reported.
Attorney General William Barr said at the time that while Clinesmith’s plea was not “earth-shattering,” it was “an indication that things are moving along at the proper pace, as dictated by the facts in this investigation.”