Matt Gaetz suggests FBI agents should be INDICTED after Durham report that found no Trump collusion with Russia – as Bureau issues groveling statement

Matt Gaetz suggested FBI agents should be fired and prosecuted over the Durham report, which concluded the Bureau should never have launched the probe into whether Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

Gaetz said the agency should be defunded and ‘defanged’, describing the agents’ actions as ‘ugly’, after Durham ruled there was insufficient evidence to probe Trump in the first place.

The Florida lawmaker said John Durham’s recommendation that only one person – a lawyer who lied to the FBI – be charged with wrongdoing was ‘insufficient’.

‘This report is an insufficient consequence for the malfeasance and corruption that we have seen here,’ Gaetz said.

‘It was an operation from beginning to end to fuse political opposition research from the DNC and the Clinton campaign with this intelligence process and criminal process. ‘And it’s a sad day in America.

‘If that had been a Republican operation – an operation to help a Republican candidate – it wouldn’t have ended in a report: it would have ended with real significant indictments.’

The 300-page report, made public on Monday at the end of a four-year enquiry, found the FBI relied too heavily on ‘raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence’.

Trump seized on the report, accusing the FBI agents involved of a plot to overthrow his presidency. ‘Treason!’ he wrote on Truth Social.

His allies Gaetz and Jim Jordan, a congressman from Ohio who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said the report showed the FBI to be dangerously partisan.

Jordan said he had invited Durham to testify before his committee next week.

Gaetz told Newsmax on Monday night that the FBI had become ‘the enforcement wing of the Democratic party to play offense against Trump.’

He called for the FBI to have its funding slashed.

‘It’s very ugly for our country and it’s very ugly for the future of a democracy where the people make the choices – not the law enforcement and intelligence officers,’ said Gaetz.

‘I think we have to deauthorize, defang and defund many of these authorities and entities and different task forces that actually converted the just and righteous act of protecting our country with the desire to have a particular political candidate win or lose.’

He also said more people should have been prosecuted as a result of Durham’s investigation.

‘The only indictment that Durham is able to cite here is the indictment of Kevin Clinesmith,’ said Gaetz.

‘This was the FBI lawyer who changed evidence before a secret court.

‘And guess what? He’s already back to practicing law. Got his law license back and practicing law here in DC now. Insufficient.’

Gaetz said that the report was a sad indictment of the state of America.

‘In a proper world, Republicans and Democrats would be able to work together on this,’ he said.

‘Because it wasn’t that long ago that the FBI was a right-wing organization, weaponized against civil rights leaders and others.

‘And it was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.’

Gaetz said the report, written by John Durham, the former U.S. Attorney for Connecticut who was appointed as special counsel in October 2020, was ‘a clarion call to every Republican’.

‘We cannot continue to fund the FBI at its currently level,’ he said.

‘And I think we should claw back the $325 million that Nancy Pelosi had gifted for the new FBI headquarters in the DC area.

‘That’s a bad thing for people’s civil liberties.

‘There should be firings, and there should be reform, and it should be bipartisan.’

Jordan on Monday night told Fox News anchor Sean Hannity that there was ‘a double standard’ for Republicans and Democrats, and agreed with Gaetz that the FBI’s funding should be cut.

‘If conservatives were involved in anything like this they would be going after them nonstop – but the other way around, you never see them actually held to account,’ he said.

‘That’s why we have to look at the power of the purse.

‘We have to look at the appropriations process.’

The FBI issued a statement apologizing for their errors and saying they had since instituted reform.

‘The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time,’ the agency said.

‘Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented.

‘This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.’