Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley released another set of FBI records at Tuesday’s oversight hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel. The files show weaponized advocacy: line agents pressing to open and join politically charged cases.
FBI leadership has long said agents do not pick their targets. The newest file says they did.
It is a February 22, 2025 email from Special Agent Kevin Gounaud. He wanted a “58 matter,” FBI code for public corruption, on Elon Musk and the OPM official behind Musk’s request that federal workers list five things they did last week. Gounaud wrote that the official, “in conspiracy with Elon Musk,” had pushed “thousands if not tens of thousands of government employees to violate government wide security policy.” The request, he said, burned “a colossal amount of official time.” He closed, “And no, I’m not kidding.”
Musk posted that a non-response would be treated as a resignation. Patel told FBI employees that night to pause. Gounaud compared the X post to Hillary Clinton’s private server and said the resignation line “potentially violates 18 U.S.C. 873,” the blackmail statute.
More advocacy was revealed in 2017 messages from Agent Walter Giardina. He asked at least seven times in four weeks to join Crossfire Hurricane and to open a cut on Trump campaign fundraising. On Inauguration Day he wrote Joe Pientka, “I wanted to mention again my interest in joining the case.” Grassley says Agent Timothy Thibault, later found by the inspector general to have violated the Hatch Act, helped him and later wrote “Wow. Great.” on Washington Field Office emails around the 2022 Peter Navarro indictment.
The same names kept showing up when the cases turned into interviews and raids. Pientka and Peter Strzok interviewed Michael Flynn. Handwritten notes later released do not match the FD-302 in the false-statements case. Field office agents questioned probable cause for the 2022 Mar-a-Lago search. Justice expanded it anyway. In a pre-raid email, agents wrote that George Toscas “frankly doesn’t give a damn about the optics.”
Patel later fired Gounaud and Giardina. Musk was the 2025 target.
Flynn, Navarro, Phares, and Trump at Mar-a-Lago were earlier ones. So was I, and Carter Page.
Why the allegiance inside the department? Was the advocacy coming from the agents, or was it solicited?
Grassley told Patel he now holds a December 2019 email to Pientka that “appears to corroborate existing public evidence that President Trump was the target of a political hit, and the government knew it many years ago.” He asked that it be declassified.
Yesterday’s hearing showed the other direction. Round River was advocacy inside the department. The point was to protect Joe Biden.
Grassley said the Foreign Influence Task Force used it to shut down sources on the Biden family under a Russian-disinformation label. Patel said the “Round River” classification banner had no FBI policy behind it. It was “basically made up.” Inspection Division is looking at who created the fake compartment. About 2,000 pages are already out.
An August 2026 inspector general report, also raised Tuesday, found Wray-era officials retaliated against FBI employee Jacob Mercer. Those officials, Grassley noted, are still employed.
These advocacy probes did not begin with the 2025 messages about Musk. They started years earlier. They started with private citizens around the president.
I was labeled a traitor and a Russian spy, then charged in the Mueller probe. The FBI staged an early-morning made-for-TV raid. 29 SWAT agents with M4 assault weapons stormed my home for CNN, claiming I was a flight risk. I was released after arraignment with no cash bond five hours later.
The targeting did not stop with the warrants. It ran through the fake news media. I was treated as the campaign’s back channel to Moscow. Page was written up as a Russian agent. Phares was tied to a militia massacre and called an associate to war crimes before any FISA application. Flynn was the leaked calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, then the resignation. Navarro was the airport perp-walk. The public image was the second case. The files supplied the names. The coverage finished the job.
What else did intelligence officials hide while under oath? What else is still buried?
