Former South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy suggested that the FBI gave preferential treatment to Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 when advising the presidential candidates on how to deal with the threat posed by foreign actors.

During a Sunday interview on Fox News, Gowdy referenced how the campaigns of both Clinton and then-candidate Donald Trump received counterintelligence "defensive" briefings, but claimed they were not the same. Gowdy said the FBI provided "two different kinds of defensive briefings to candidates depending on who you like and who you don't," and coupled with how the FBI withheld transcript material from the FISA court, "then your bias begins to impact the investigation."

Prior to Gowdy's assertion on this week's "Sunday Morning Futures," there had not been any indication that Trump's briefing was different than Clinton's.

Gregory Brower, assistant director of the FBI's Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in October 2017 to confirm "an experienced FBI counterintelligence agent" provided a defensive briefing to Trump in August 2016 "focused on the broad range of threats posed by foreign intelligence entities." The letter said "[s]imilar briefings" were also provided to Clinton and the two vice presidential candidates prior to the November election, and that campaign staff additionally were briefed.

Republicans, including Gowdy, have long expressed concern about the possibility of politically motivated federal officials working to undermine Trump's campaign, which was under investigation by the FBI as early as the summer of 2016 for suspected coordination with the Russian government. Giving rise to those fears, for instance, was the revelation that former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page exchanged text messages that harbored a starkly negative opinion of Trump.

A Justice Department inspector general report, which came out in the summer of 2018, said their text messages "potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations. But the inspector general determined that there was no evidence “improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions."

But concerns remain. Trump's briefing was coordinated by Strzok, which raised red flags among Republicans. According to Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, it made no mention of the counterintelligence investigation into members of the Trump team that he opened less than three weeks prior.

In recent weeks Gowdy, who was chairman of the Oversight Committee until he left Congress at the beginning of this year, has spoken out about classified information he claims “has the potential to be a game changer.” Last month he discussed unreleased transcripts of recorded conversations between FBI informants and former Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos. Gowdy said “one in particular has the potential to actually persuade people" and noted this "exculpatory evidence related to Papadopoulos was not included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page."

Soon afterwards, Trump delegated Attorney General William Barr sweeping powers to declassify documents on surveillance activities into Trump campaign as part of his investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation.

In his interview with host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Gowdy called for the transcript to be released so the American public can view them. Gowdy, now a contributor of Fox News, said they were persuasive enough for him to change his mind after initially being "supportive" of the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to carry out the Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"You want to think of law enforcement as being unbiased and disinterested in the outcome as long as we just find the facts. But when you have information that someone you think has done something wrong has, in fact, not done something wrong, when you have exculpatory information and you don't share it with others and then you put that together with Strzok and Page and the defensive briefings, remember, Maria, the defense of [former FBI Director James] Comey and the media and the Democrats has always been, yeah, some of the FBI was biased against Trump, and it didn't really matter. This really matters," Gowdy said.