Sen. James Lankford James Paul LankfordMcConnell works to lock down GOP votes for coronavirus bill Charities scramble to plug revenue holes during pandemic Warren calls for Postal Service board members to fire DeJoy or resign MORE (R-Okla.) said in a Sunday show interview that the anti-Trump texts sent by an FBI agent formerly working on the special counsel’s probe into Russia's election meddling do not taint “the entire process” of the investigation.

Lankford, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, emphasized the importance of whether the agent was “directing the investigation one way or the other.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“Is that something they can go back, and repair, and look and see if there's any kind of bias that's in it? Obviously, I don't think it taints the entire process. But it certainly taints that season of it,” Lankford said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

“And it's something you should look at with any political investigation that he was on at the time. Again, we want our FBI agents to be neutral and to be nonpolitical. Not very actively engaged politically.”

The senator’s comments come as conservatives have tried to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election interference and any potential ties between Trump campaign members and Moscow.

Pundits on the right and some Republican lawmakers have tried to capitalize on news that Mueller’s team removed FBI investigator Peter Strzok from the probe after learning that he sent anti-Trump messages during the 2016 campaign.