Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has released a new batch of unclassified FBI emails tied to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the Obama-era probe into alleged ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. The documents show a former FBI agent pushing to open a criminal investigation into Elon Musk earlier this year.
The agent, Kevin Gounaud, who left the bureau in February according to his LinkedIn profile, sent an email that same month seeking to launch a criminal probe of Musk over a post on X. At the time, Musk was a special government employee running the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk had told government workers on X to share five things they worked on each day.
“Musk used a non government system (twitter) to relate information that allegedly was 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,” Gounaud wrote. “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.”
Grassley mocked the effort in a post on X: “Here is an email I released 2day showing an FBI agent who was ready2 open a CRIMINAL CASE all bc Elon Musk asked govt bureaucrats 2 report 5 things they did in a wk. Compare that 2 Iowans who work frm sunup to sundown EVERY DAY Washington rlly is an island surrounded by reality.”
The Iowa senator made his case in blunt terms during a recent Oversight hearing alongside FBI Director Kash Patel.
“The previous Democrat administrations under Obama and Biden conducted secret, insidious and downright evil operations that almost took down our government,” Grassley said. “That’s arguably worse than Watergate.”
He went further, arguing the pattern of conduct inside the bureau outweighs anything Trump himself has faced. “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,” Grassley said.
Two other agents named
The release also names two other former FBI agents, Walter Giardina and Timothy Thibault. Patel fired Giardina in August over accusations of political weaponization. The emails show Giardina contacted superiors at least seven times over four weeks starting in January 2017 asking to be put on the Crossfire Hurricane case, which was handed to special counsel Robert Mueller that May.
Giardina’s emails, sent to former Supervising Agent Joe Pientka, also included correspondence involving Thibault. Grassley has previously accused Thibault of violating the Hatch Act after he reshared a Lincoln Project post calling Trump a “psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man.” That allegation was investigated and dismissed by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
Grassley said the pattern raises doubts about claims from former bureau officials that agents don’t choose their own assignments. “Based on the records known to date, that case didn’t advance,” Grassley said. “His efforts, as well as the case he tried to open on Senator Sinema, undercut public statements by former FBI officials that agents don’t get to pick their cases.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee under Grassley has released multiple rounds of documents over the past decade from FBI operations, including Operation Arctic Frost and Round River, which he says show the Justice Department was weaponized against Trump and Republicans. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest release.
