In an interview with FOX News' Martha MacCallum on Tuesday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said a State Department source, defined by Hillary Clinton as "an old friend who emailed her from time to time, passed information from foreign sources to Christopher Steele that eventually was put in his infamous dossier. When asked if that friend was longtime Clinton insider Sydney Blumenthal Gowdy said you are "very warm" if you believe that.



Gowdy said some information from this "old friend" passed on came from foreign sources.



The dossier, according to the memo released by Republicans, was instrumental in obtaining the FISA warrant to surveil the Trump campaign.











"I'm pretty troubled by what I read in the documents with respect to the role the State Department played in the fall of 2016, including information that was used in a court proceeding. I am troubled by it," Gowdy said.



"So, weeks before the election, somebody in the Obama State Department was feeding information from a foreign source to Christopher Steele?" MacCallum asked.



"When you hear who the source, one of the sources, of that information is, you’re going to think 'oh my gosh. I've heard that name somewhere before. Where could it possibly have been?'" Gowdy said Tuesday.



"The foreign source?" MacCallum asked.



"The domestic source, and I'm trying to think how Secretary Clinton defined him. I think she said he was an old friend who emailed her from time to time," Gowdy said of the source.



"Sidney Blumenthal?" MacCallum asked.



"That'd be really warm. If you're warm, yeah," Gowdy answered.



Gowdy said Democrats will purposefully put information in their memo that gets redacted to cause "this belief that there's something being hidden from the American people."



"The Democrats are politically smart enough to put things in the memo that require either the Bureau or the Department of Justice to say it needs to be redacted," Gowdy said. "Therefore, it creates this belief that there's something being hidden from the American people. And keep in mind, this is the same crowd that voted not to release our memo and voted not to gain a lot of this information over the last 12 months. But unfortunately we're in an environment where you would include material that you know has to be redacted and you know responsible people are going to redacted, just so that question will be asked."