GOP senator tells Bill Barr: 'The real crisis' is an FBI agent's text complaining about smelly Trump supporters
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Wednesday asserted that the "real crisis" in Washington, D.C. comes from a former FBI agent who disparaged President Donald Trump's supporters in a text message.
At a Senate hearing with Attorney General William Barr, Hawley chose to focus on two individual FBI agents instead of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election attacks.
"August 26, 2016," Hawley told the committee, "this is a text message from Peter Strzok, a top counterintelligence investigator we now know hope launched this counterspy investigation of the president of the United States. Peter Strzok says, 'Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could smell the Trump support.'"
"You want to know what’s really going on here, why the counterintelligence investigation really happened question on why we are all really sitting here today? That’s it, right there!" the senator continued. "Because an unelected bureaucrat, and an elected official in this government, who clearly has open disdain if not outright hatred for Trump voters like the people of my state, for instance. 'I could smell the Trump support?' Then try to overturn the result of a democratic election."
According to Hawley, Strzok's text was "why we are here today."
"It's open, blatant prejudice!" Hawley exclaimed. "That's the real crisis here. And it is a crisis. Because if there's not accountability, if this can go on in the United States of America, well, my goodness gracious, we don't have a democracy anymore."
