Newly released FBI files offer yet another reason why we consider Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley a hero on deep state issues and “Exhibit A” for the case against age/term limits for legislators. Once again, he has proven he definitely is on the job.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday with FBI Director Kash Patel, Sen. Grassley released an email showing that one particularly aggressive agent named Kevin Gounaud, who is no longer with the agency, sought to open a criminal investigation (!) into Elon Musk at the time Musk had been assigned as a special federal employee to look into government efficiency under the DOGE program. He was so enthusiastic about this idea that he offered to write up the paperwork to open the case and to find a prosecutor who would take it.
Good grief.
He also offered to forward information on the case to Congress or the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Inspector General.
Recall that in early 2025, Musk and the OPM asked federal employees to make a bullet-point list of their accomplishments for the week. And it was pretty hard-line, as Musk posted on X, “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” The government needed to clean house, and this was one way to get that process started. Providing such a list of achievements didn’t seem like that much to ask --- it was just to show that these employees were actually doing the jobs they’d been hired to do --- but it was drummed up into something quite controversial at the time. Controversial, but...criminal?
Just the News reports that according to Agent Gounaud, “Musk’s effort to get government employees to share their weekly accomplishments in an email ‘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.’”
Never mind that the OPM email to employees specifically directed them not to include any classified information, links or attachments.
Gounaud even added, “And no, I’m not kidding.” Indeed, the idea of criminally investigating Musk over a novel policy suggestion sounds so outrageous that he might logically have seen the need to put that in.
Oh, and this goes further. In his proposal ** Gounaud even tried to turn the issue into a conspiracy**, a huge step: “I would like to recommend the opening of a criminal 58 matter on the person(s) at OPM who approved the transmission of the earlier email. That person [is] in conspiracy with Elon Musk (who is reportedly an SGE [Special Government Employee])…”
Gounaud even suggested that Musk’s use of his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to announce the policy --- when Musk was just trying to be transparent to the public --- was in itself illegal, comparing it to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. What?
Two thoughts immediately come to mind: 1) Hillary was using her private email server secretly, to AVOID transparency, specifically Freedom of Information Act requests, and 2) what did the FBI ever do to Hillary Clinton about that? Might want to ask former FBI Director James Comey that question.
If this agent Gounaud had had a functioning brain, these considerations would have occurred to him. But as we all know by now, Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS, is a brain-wasting disease.
Here’s an example of the stretching he did: “Furthermore, Musk used a non government system (twitter) to relate information that was allegedly for official purposes. In doing so, because he is monetized (he is a majority owner of twitter), he likely generated income for himself based on Twitter’s monetization model and/or advertising revenues. Furthermore, this likely violates 18 USC 208 and the terms of his SGE [Special Government Employee] agreement – an SGE cannot monetize themselves with their government work.”
As once stated by the head of Stalin’s secret police, show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime. By the way, if we’re going to stretch the law to charge people we don’t like with crimes, how about sending the Grammar Police after this now-former agent for using the word “themselves” as a singular pronoun? And what about his random capitalization of “Twitter”? Pardon the digression…
RELATED STORY: In more FBI news, Director Kash Patel has released new documents related to the investigation of the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. The documents are being used by the Senate Judiciary Committee (hooray again for Sen. Grassley) for their own inquiry.
As you know, the President’s ear was grazed by a bullet that missed his head by millimeters, two others were wounded, and a bystander, Corey Comperatore, was fatally shot.
According to the documents that were released, the motives of the suspect, Thomas Crooks, who was killed in the attack, remain unknown. But there was some previously unseen information, such as that Crooks had been described as “emotionless since birth” --- literally, he was silent even as he came into the world --- and had never had friends in middle or high school.
The documents include interviews with Thomas’s father, Matthew, who said they never had a father-son bond. Thomas was difficult to read, he said, because his son just never showed emotions or laughed. Thomas did have angry outbursts, though, such as the time he dumped an entire container of fish food into his sister’s aquarium during an argument.
He apparently was highly intelligent, scoring (according to his father) a 1400 the first time he took the SAT. That was without studying, and after he did prepare, he scored 1500 (again, according to dad).
For some reason, Thomas used the alias “Bob Dole” when ordering suspicious packages.
And here’s something ** we certainly hope the FBI has looked into**: an anonymous donor paid to have his body cremated.
Still, this release of documentation is pretty sparse after more than two years of investigating.
Trump vented his frustration on Truth Social: “Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t didn’t do what they should have with respect to the lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA. By the time I got into office, on January 20, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted or gone.
“New information was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago. This was all a Democrat plot, to get me out of the election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said.”
Recall that Wray was appointed as FBI director by President Trump --- at the recommendation of Chris Christie, which is a story in itself --- after Trump’s 2017 firing of James Comey. When Trump got back into office in 2025, he brought in Kash Patel and the culture finally began changing.
In an update, here’s something Dan Bongino brought up in his Wednesday podcast: that the documents just revealed by Sen. Grassley had been turned over to him by the FBI back in March, so they’ve had months to investigate. (If there’s been more information turned over since then, he’s no longer in a position to know.) He proposes that there be an independent commission --- not including anyone from the FBI, CIA, or other “alphabet agencies” --- to look at EVERYTHING, every piece of evidence, along with massive declassification. Every question anyone wants to ask should be asked and answered. “It’s the only way,” he said.
Also on Wednesday, ** Judicial Watch offered more on this in a press release**, as it was their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that forced the release of these documents (still heavily redacted, sorry to say). Great reading; lots more detail here.
RELATED BUT NOT WORTH YOUR TIME: For Patel’s appearance at that Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which should have provided opportunity for a productive discussion on plummeting crime rates, the Democrats had apparently decided in advance to head that off by attacking him personally instead, accusing him of being a drunk and more. And when talking about the agency as a whole, even the word bestiality was brought to the floor by these morons. There is no limit to their absurdity. We won’t go further into it here, but if you’d like to be more thoroughly disgusted with Democrats than you already are, ** the New York Post has a good write-up**.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois (who slammed Patel as “the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history”), Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii come off particularly badly here. We deserve so much better than to be subjected to this idiocy. If these are the best “leaders” the Democrat Party can bring us, they should just pack it in. But they never will.
