The Obama FBI tried to destroy Donald Trump.
When that failed, they picked a new target.
And Chuck Grassley just proved that the Deep State didn't stop when Trump won – it just went quiet and waited for its next opening.
FBI Agent Tried to Open a Criminal Case Because Musk Asked Employees to Work
The bombshell in today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing landed when Grassley revealed an email sent by former FBI Special Agent Kevin Gounaud on February 22, 2025.
That date matters.
Kash Patel had been confirmed as FBI Director exactly two days earlier.
And this agent – already knowing the walls were closing in – fired off an email to the bureau's public corruption squad trying to open a criminal investigation into Elon Musk.
Why?
Because Musk posted on X asking federal employees to list five things they accomplished that week.
The agent compared it to Hillary Clinton's private email server scandal.
Grassley posted the email on X and made the point himself: an FBI agent was ready to open a criminal case because Elon Musk asked government bureaucrats to account for their week.
The Same Pattern That Started Crossfire Hurricane
This is the exact same playbook the FBI ran in 2016.
Crossfire Hurricane – the FBI's secret investigation into Donald Trump's presidential campaign – was launched on July 31, 2016, based on what Special Counsel John Durham later proved was "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence."
Durham's 316-page report confirmed the FBI had zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion as late as March 2017 – eight months into the investigation.
Zero.
They launched the investigation anyway, using a Steele dossier that Hillary Clinton's campaign had funded, and deployed it against a sitting presidential candidate.
Now we know another FBI agent tried the same move against Trump's second administration before Patel even unpacked his office.
https://twitter.com/foxnewspolitics/status/2100241163844538491?s=20
Grassley put it bluntly during the hearing with Patel: "The previous Democrat administrations under Obama and Biden conducted secret, insidious and downright evil operations that almost took down our government."
"That's arguably worse than Watergate."
He's right.
Walter Giardina Begged Seven Times to Join the Witch Hunt
The document dump doesn't stop with Musk.
The emails also reveal that former FBI agent Walter Giardina – who Patel fired in August for political weaponization – spent the entire first month of the Trump administration bombarding his supervisors with requests to join Crossfire Hurricane, sending seven emails in four weeks.
Seven times.
In four weeks.
That's not an agent following the evidence.
That's an agent hunting a target.
Giardina was in contact throughout with Timothy Thibault – the same agent Grassley previously accused of violating the Hatch Act after Thibault reshared a Lincoln Project post calling Trump a "psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man."
These weren't random bureaucrats making innocent mistakes.
They were a network – and the emails prove they operated together, across administrations, with the same mission: take down anyone connected to Trump and anyone who helps him.
The Deep State Doesn't Change. It Just Picks New Targets.
Gounaud sent that email targeting Musk the same day Musk announced the DOGE productivity requirement.
The same day.
That means an active FBI agent was monitoring Musk's public statements in real time and reaching out to the corruption squad within hours.
That's not a spontaneous concern about government ethics.
That's a surveillance operation dressed up in paperwork.
https://twitter.com/OffThePress1/status/2099897658504524156?s=20
Durham proved the FBI gave Hillary Clinton's campaign a defensive briefing when they detected foreign interference threats – but never warned Trump.
Now we're finding out that the same institutional bias was still operating in 2025, targeting the man Trump put in charge of cutting government waste.
Patel saw it coming.
He dismantled the CR-15 public corruption squad – the exact squad Gounaud tried to recruit for his Musk investigation – in October 2025.
Grassley has spent years pulling this thread.
Operation Arctic Frost, Operation Round River, Crossfire Hurricane – document release after document release showing the same FBI insiders running the same playbook against the same political targets.
The only thing that changed is the target's name.
First it was Trump.
Then it was Musk.
Who was next?
Sources:
- Elaine Mallon, "Worse than Watergate: New FBI Files Detail Agent's Push to Join Trump Probe, Investigate Elon Musk," Fox News, September 16, 2026.
- Brooke Singman, "Ex-FBI Agent Urged Criminal Probe of Elon Musk's X Use, Likened It to Clinton Email Scandal," Fox News, February 3, 2026.
- Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, "Grassley, Johnson Fight for Unredacted Crossfire Hurricane Interview Transcripts," Senate Judiciary Committee, 2025.
- Ben Shapiro, "The Worst Political Scandal in American History?" The Daily Wire, May 17, 2023.
- The Federalist, "Bombshell: Obama Admin Had No Actual Evidence of Collusion by Trump When It Launched Crossfire Hurricane Investigation," The Federalist, May 15, 2023.
