

FILE – In this April 4, 2017, file photo, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., speaks during a hearing of the House Judiciary subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, on Capitol Hill, in Washington. Gowdy has been tapped to lead the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after Chairman Jason Chaffetz leaves Congress at the end of month. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Former House Intel Chair Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, has a pretty good idea of how prosecutors think.

Gowdy shared with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo that he thought former FBI official Andrew McCabe wasn’t being prosecuted because they were having trouble getting an indictment, despite the fact that McCabe had “lacked candor” about leaking to the media about the Hillary Clinton investigation.

Gowdy explained that that decision had nothing to do with the FISA abuse and the initiation of the Russia probe that is being looked into by U.S. Attorney John Durham. He outlined that McCabe could still be under investigation for other things.

Gowdy outlined what he thought that U.S. Attorney John Durham was looking into in his “investigation into the investigators.”

“He’s looking at three things, the factual predicate for this Russia investigation. And I’m not talking about the summer of 2016. I’m talking about stuff that happened in late 2015 and early 2016,” Gowdy said to Bartiromo.

From Washington Examiner:

“Remember, the DOJ and the FBI told Paul Ryan and Devin Nunes and myself repeatedly and exclusively that nothing happened before June of 2016, no payments were made, no contacts with the Trump campaign,” he added, referring back to his time as a lead GOP investigator in Congress. “I’m sure John Durham is looking to see whether or not that’s true.” Two other areas of interest Gowdy pointed out were alleged government surveillance abuses in targeting a member of the Trump 2016 campaign and the January 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian election interference. “I’m sure John Durham is looking to see whether or not that’s true. He’s also looking at the FISA process and misrepresentations made to the FISA court,” the former federal prosecutor said. “I think he’s also looking at that ICA, that intelligence community assessment, that John Brennan got done towards the end of the Barack Obama tenure, to make sure whether or not that was thoroughly investigated and whether or not all the right information made its way into that ICA.”

Many reports have indicated that’s not true and that things began before that point. Bartiromo outlined a number of incidents with people in the case reaching out to Trump campaign people before that June 2016 date. Gowdy said that the FBI officials were in big trouble if it was found they had started things before the point they claimed in 2016 because they’ve locked themselves into that date. Gowdy explained, “If something did happen, then either the FBI misrepresented facts to us, or it wasn’t the FBI, it was another agency that was doing it. Both of those are important to know. And John Durham, I hope, is going to be able to answer that question.”

Bartiromo then raised the possibility that before that point, people may have been being run by the CIA at the Trump campaign and that would explain why Durham was interested in John Brennan and Brennan’s emails.

Bartiromo and Gowdy then spoke about the exculpatory piece of evidence regarding George Papadopolous which the FBI allegedly disregarded, to use Papadopoulos barroom talk as a reason to open the investigation. Papadopoulos said he didn’t do it, but that was apparently not shared with the court in the process of the investigation.