- Trey Gowdy said Sunday that an FBI transcript he reviewed while in Congress changed his “perspective” of the Mueller investigation.
- Republicans have alluded to the mystery transcript, which is believed to be from an FBI informant’s interactions with George Papadopoulos.
- Gowdy has previously said the transcript is a potential “game-changer” in terms of the public’s opinion of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
Former Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said Sunday that his “perspective” of the special counsel’s investigation changed after he saw a transcript of an interaction between the FBI and a Trump campaign associate believed to be George Papadopoulos.
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“I was supportive of [Robert] Mueller. I was supportive of the idea to initiate, to investigate what Russia did, but when I saw this transcript, it actually changed my perspective,” Gowdy said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Republicans have hinted at the existence of a transcript that contains exculpatory information for Papadopoulos, who the FBI claims was the catalyst for its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.
Papadopoulos had encounters with several mysterious figures during his stint on the Trump campaign. He met Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer and Stefan Halper, a former Cambridge professor who was identified as an FBI informant in 2018.
Gowdy, who served on the House Intelligence Committee before leaving office in January, said in a May 19 interview on Fox News that the public would likely see the transcript as a “game-changer” if it was ever released.
Gowdy said Sunday the mysterious transcripts were not provided to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which approved four FBI surveillance warrants against Carter Page, another Trump campaign adviser. The applications cited information from the unverified Steele dossier and also mentioned Papadopoulos.
Republicans have accused the FBI of misleading the FISC by withholding details of the information gathered in its investigation of Trump & Co.