I’m going to [tell] my colleagues as a reminder that there are some tricks of the trade to get to your political enemies or for other reasons like covering up embarrassing situations or just to cover up wrongdoing.
I’m going to use and compliment this administration, as one of its first acts taking office, the Trump administration and Attorney General Bondi shut down the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
Despite criticism, this is a positive step, given what the task force had been twisted into by the Biden administration.
This task force was created in 2017 by then-Director Wray for very good reasons.
We were told it was designed to counteract malign foreign influence operations.
However, this task force became infected with politics.
In other words, this task force became a political weapon. Let me explain how this became weaponized.
[For] example, in 2020, during my and Senator Johnson’s Biden family investigation, that FBI task force was involved in unnecessarily briefing us two senators. But that only happened after pressure from our Democratic colleagues. So, pure and simple, this was a set up.
The FBI wrongly did the bidding of the Democrats.
The results of the set up [were] this: the contents of that briefing were later leaked to the media, even though the FBI promised us confidentiality.
Those leaks were used to falsely link our Biden family investigation to somehow advancing Russian disinformation.
The FBI’s conduct undermined and frustrated our congressional investigation.
My and Senator Johnson’s investigation made public Obama-Biden administration records.
That included Treasury information of financial transactions between and among Biden family members.
We also made public authentic bank records showing deep financial connections between and among the Biden family and China.
Authentic records like these, as we all know now, has nothing to do with Russian disinformation.
So, I compliment President Trump and Attorney General Bondi for getting rid of this Foreign Influence Task Force and its obstructive conduct. That’s how it ended up.
If the task force did any good, I only know what it did bad, and that was setting Senator Johnson and I up because there was some embarrassing information that they obviously did not want out.
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