GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy and Andrew Napolitano gently demolish Trump's 'spygate' allegations on Fox News

Rep. Trey Gowdy debunks &quot;spygate&quot;

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Fox News)

last updated 30 May 2018

Rudy Giuliani, one of President Trump's lawyers in the Russia investigation, has been pretty frank that Trump's claim about the FBI implanting spies in his campaign is a public-relations campaign to sway public opinion against Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. But as a matter of fact, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith isn't the only person at Trump's favorite cable news channel who isn't buying the "spygate" conspiracy.

After attending classified Justice Department briefings last week about the FBI informant, "I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump,” House Oversight Committee Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Tuesday night.

"President Trump himself in the Comey memos said if anyone connected with my campaign was working with Russia, I want you to investigate it, and it sounds to me like that is exactly what the FBI did," Gowdy said. "I think when the president finds out what happened, he is going to be not just fine, he is going to be glad that we have an FBI that took seriously what they heard. ... We run toward the criminality, but I would think everyone would want to know what Russia did."

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Former Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Trump favorite, followed Gowdy, and he was similarly unimpressed with the claims being made by Trump and Giuliani. The FBI spying allegations "seem to be baseless — there is no evidence for that whatsoever," he told MacCallum. "But this other allegation with this professor — whose name we're not supposed to mention — that is standard operating procedure in intelligence gathering and criminal investigations." Like Gowdy, Napolitano sympathized with Trump's frustration, but as for the claims of political spying, he said, "I'd want to see evidence before I made an allegation that outrageous." Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.