Republican Rep. Jim Jordan referred to leaked text messages between two former-top FBI officials as an “animus against Trump” and “extreme bias,” speaking on CNN’s “Cuomo Primetime” Monday.
“It was the most extreme bias I’ve ever seen,” Jordan told anchor Chris Cuomo.
In the interview, Jordan also expressed concern the same people who ran the investigation into the Hillary Clinton’s emails and “rigged it” in her favor were now the ones controlling the Trump-Russian investigation at the bureau.
“Peter Strzok is the one interviewing Mike Flynn. So it’s appropriate, I think, just common sense-wise for Americans to step back and say, ‘hey, maybe there’s something there,'” Jordan told Cuomo, in justifying why he believed the memo, containing those text messages ought to be released.
Jordan went on to refer to the people at the top of the FBI as “certainly pro-Clinton” after Monday morning saw the resignation of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who voted in the Republican primary of the 2016 election.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have spent the last days and weeks sifting through leaked text messages between FBI officials Strzok and Lisa Page.
In one conversation, Strzok, the former No. 2 counterintelligence official at the FBI, seemed to suggest he didn’t think there was any thing to the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the US election, according to Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
In others, the pair discussed “our task” and a “secret society,” as well as ways to “fix” damage done by the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email server, Johnson and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy have said.
Jordan and Cuomo also discussed a classified memo written by Republicans alleging FBI abuses in their surveillance. The House Intelligence Committee voted Monday along party lines to release the memo to the public — an aggressive move that could feed a GOP push to undercut special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and ratchet up a battle with the Justice Department. The memo is set to be released Tuesday, pending approval from the White House.
“What I know is I’ve read it,” Jordan told Cuomo. “And there have been lingering questions about this dossier for months. And the American people — if they’re asking the question ‘was the dossier used?’ — that’s a legitimate question.”
Jordan, pushed by Cuomo to address the lack of sourcing in the memo, maintained that the American people deserve to see it, even though he said he wished they had the “appropriate references, citations, footnoting to the underlying source.”
He also noted that FBI Director Christopher Wray had looked at the document Sunday with Gowdy and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and had not said anything to indicate that it should not be released. The Department of Justice has previously said it would be “reckless” to release the memo.
“The fact is, I think it’ll speak for itself and I think it’ll answer a lot of questions,” he said.