Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) called on the Justice Department to end its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election during a tense House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday examining the FBI and DOJ’s actions surrounding the 2016 election. “Finish it the hell up,” Gowdy told FBI director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein flatly.
“The Russia investigation has been going on for almost two years now,” said Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, before recounting the many ways disgraced FBI official Peter Strzok — the man chosen to lead the investigation — had revealed his profound bias against President Trump. Agreeing that an investigation into Russia’s attempts to meddle in the election was important, the South Carolina congressman pointed out that it didn’t seem important to about “a half-dozen FBI agents and lawyers who were assigned to the case.”
“For them, it was an investigation to stop Donald Trump,” he argued.
“So this is where we are. We’re two years into this investigation, we’re a year and a half into the presidency. We’re over a year into special counsel. You have a counter-intelligence investigation that’s become public. You have a criminal investigation that’s become political. You have more bias than I have ever seen manifest in a law enforcement officer in the 20 years I used to do it for a living. And four other DOJ employees who had manifest animus towards the person they were supposed to be neutrally and detachedly investigating,” Gowdy added.
“Democrats are using this investigation as a presumption of guilt, which I find astonishing. And in the long run, for the health of this republic, I would encourage them to go back to the presumption of innocence that we used to hold sacred. There’s a presumption of guilt. There’s a desire by Democratic senators to fundraise off of your investigation,” he said. “More than 60 Democrats have voted to proceed with impeachment before Bob Mueller has found a single, solitary, damn thing!” he exclaimed.
“Russia attacked this country. They should be the target,” Gowdy pointed out. “But Russia isn’t being hurt by this investigation right now. We are.”
He continued: “We’ve seen the bias. We’ve seen the bias! We need to see the evidence. If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury. If you have evidence that this president acted inappropriately, present it to the American people. There’s an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied,” he said. “I think right now all of us are being denied.”
Gowdy concluded: “Whatever you got, finish it the hell up because this country is being torn apart.”
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