An FBI agent wanted to open a criminal case against Elon Musk over DOGE’s “five things” email — and another repeatedly lobbied to get onto the bureau’s Trump-Russia investigation.
Those are the two biggest takeaways from a new batch of FBI records released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley during Tuesday’s oversight hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel.
Former Special Agent Kevin Gounaud pushed colleagues in February 2025 to investigate Musk and Office of Personnel Management officials after federal workers were asked to list five things they had accomplished the previous week.
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Gounaud argued the request wasted “a colossal amount of official time,” risked exposing sensitive government information and may have financially benefited Musk because he promoted the initiative on X.
He also compared Musk’s use of the platform to Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
“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,” Gounaud wrote.
Then he made clear he was serious about opening a case.
“Happy to write the case opening and find a prosecutor (or at least try),” he wrote. “Alternatively, I am happy to report this to the OPM OIG or Congress. And no, I’m not kidding.”
Grassley also released emails involving former FBI Special Agent Walter Giardina, who worked on investigations involving Trump.
According to the records and Grassley’s account, Giardina asked at least seven times over roughly four weeks to join the Crossfire Hurricane team and help open another case tied to Trump.
“I wanted to mention again my interest in joining the case,” Giardina wrote to FBI agent Joe Pientka on Jan. 20, 2017 — Trump’s first Inauguration Day.
Eight days earlier, he had told FBI supervisor Timothy Thibault: “I’d be very glad to work with your squads regarding these matters. Please let me know when I could stop by to meet and how I can assist.”
Grassley argued the emails undercut claims that FBI agents simply worked whatever cases supervisors assigned them.
“In the records, Giardina asked at least seven times via email in about four weeks to place himself on the Crossfire Hurricane team and start a new case on Trump,” Grassley said.
“Based on the records known to date, that case didn’t advance.”
“The previous Democrat administrations under Obama and Biden conducted secret, insidious and downright evil operations that almost took down our government,” Grassley said at the hearing.
“That’s arguably worse than Watergate.”
More over at Fox News:
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