An FBI special agent sought to criminally investigate Elon Musk when he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over Musk’s demand that government officials list five things they accomplished in a week, according to an email released Senator Charles Grassley, Tuesday.
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Ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of the FBI, Tuesday morning, Chairman Grassley made public several new emails related to a Crossfire sub-case and involving at least three discredited FBI officials: Special Agent Thibault, the anti-Trump agent who violated the Hatch Act for his partisan political conduct; Special Agent Giardina, who reportedly filed a false FISA in the Walid Phares case and was involved in many cases against Republicans; and Special Agent Kevin Gounaud, who wanted to criminally investigate then-DOGE Chief Musk.
In to his supervisor at the Washington Field Office on February 22, 2025, Gounaud wrote that he was recommending the opening of a criminal case on both Musk and the person(s) at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) who approved the transmission of Musk’s email to government employees.
Gounaud claimed that the person was in a “conspiracy with Elon Musk” and “in addition to wasting a colossal amount of official time, encouraged, abetted, aided, etc. thousands if not tens of thousands of government employees to violate government wide security policy and transmit sensitive government information outside of a strict need to know.”
Gounaud also objected to Musk using a non government system (X) “to relate information that allegedly was for official purposes,” comparing it to “Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server for government business,” even though Clinton had transmitted highly classified information on her unsecured server and was famously not prosecuted for it.
The special agent also accused Musk—the richest man in the world—of having a conflict of interest, stating that the X owner was “likely” violating the terms of his Special Government Employee (SGE) agreement, which stipulates that an SGE may not “monetize themselves with their government work.”
It should be noted that the Department of Justice never prosecuted Huma Abedin, who in 2012 simultaneously worked for the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department, Clinton’s personal office in New York, and Teneo Holdings, a corporate consultancy run by longtime Bill Clinton adviser Doug Band.
“Reading Musk’s message even in the most positive light, that message threatened persons with firing if they did not participate in an act that violated policy. This potentially violates 18 USC
873,” Gounaud wrote. “Happy to write the case opening and find a prosecutor (or at least try). Alternatively, I am happy to report this to the OPM OIG or Congress. And no, I’m not kidding.”
In his opening statement at the hearing Tuesday, Grassley said, “for almost a decade now, I’ve made records public showing how a number of now discredited law enforcement and intelligence officials schemed to take out Trump and other Republicans.”
The chairman noted that Democrats still try to defend discredited FBI agents like Giardina, who “asked at least seven times via email in about four weeks to place himself on the Crossfire team and start a new case on Trump,” according
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Grassley said Giardina also tried to open a case against former Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who was known to frustrate Democrats on key votes by voting with Republicans.
These efforts, Grassley said, “undercut public statements by former FBI officials that agents don’t get to pick their cases.”
“Notably, his efforts to join the Crossfire team began as early as January 2017, right before Trump took office. And on the day of Trump’s inauguration, Giardina emailed FBI agent Joe Pientka, ‘I wanted to mention again my interest in joining the case.’”
For almost a decade now, I’ve made records public showing how a number of now discredited law enforcement and intelligence officials schemed to take out Trump and other Republicans. And here we are, in 2026, still finding records from years ago showing even more evidence of targeting.
The overall sustained efforts by the Deep State in the dark corners of the bureaucracy is worse than anything Trump has been accused of. At least he’s upfront and open so people can judge.
The previous Democrat administrations, under both Obama and Biden, conducted secret, insidious and downright evil operations that almost took down our government. That’s arguably worse than Watergate.
Grassley also defended FBI Director Kash Patel for terminating the highly politicized Round River Foreign Influence Task Force operation.
“It appears the [Christopher] Wray FBI intentionally misclassified information which would result in more obstacles to obtaining access,” the senator said. “The Foreign Influence Task Force was the same outfit that gave me and Senator Johnson the fake briefing used to undermine our Biden family investigation in 2020. Director Patel, you’re right to shut down that political task force,” he added.
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Full Senate Judiciary Committee hearing below:
