Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., on Sunday discounted ex- Trump adviser Carter Page as more “Inspector Gadget than… James Bond,” but lamented “we will never know” if the FBI had enough evidence to secretly surveil him.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Gowdy lamented the FBI “missed a really good opportunity to tell the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] judge exactly who paid” for a dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele that was used as the basis for the warrant — a redacted version of which was released last Friday.
“My take is that Carter Page is more like Inspector Gadget then he is Jason Bourne or James Bond,” said Gowdy. .”[President Donald] Trump never met him, he never had a conversation with him. I'm sure he's been on the FBI's radar … before 2016.”
“Here's what we will never know,” Gowdy continued. “We will never know whether or not the FBI had enough without the dossier, the unvetted [Democratic National Committee]-funded dossier, because they included it and everyone who reads this FISA application sees the amount of reliance they placed on this product funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC.”
Gowdy also was critical of Trump’s post-summit news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying “there was this equivocation during the press conference that I'm glad [Trump] corrected it, but when you are the leader of the free world, every syllable matters and you really shouldn't be having to correct it…”
He also was critical of Trump’s invitation to Putin to meet in the White House.
“I think that the United States of America sometimes has to meet with people that we don't have anything in common with,” he said, adding: “But it's very different to issue an invitation” which “should be reserved, I think, for our allies like Great Britain and Canada and Australia and those who are with us day in and day out.”
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