Ric Grenell: 'I've Seen the Evidence,' Comey Must Be 'Prosecuted'

Ric Grenell

 

Former President Donald Trump's acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell told Newsmax on Wednesday he "is eager" to see the "Russiagate" investigation by special counsel John Durham get to former FBI Director Jim Comey.

"I'm eager to get to Comey, and to the others at the FBI, who knew absolutely that they were pushing a phony hoax," Grenell told "Greg Kelly Reports." "I talked to mid-level FBI agents who told me they didn't classify information; they didn't redact all of this information. Their bosses did, and so I want to go up the food chain."

Grenell was reacting to Hillary Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann's acquittal for lying to the FBI in first court trial of the Durham investigation into the origin of the fake Russia collusion narrative that dominated Trump's first term in office.

"We live in a country where no one is above the law, and this political partisanship that's going on in Washington, D.C., where three Clinton donors and an AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.] donor all get together with the judge who's married to someone who represented Lisa Page, somehow tries to tell the rest of America that we have a really clean, honest, legal system, and I think that the American people can see it," Grenell said. "They know that it's phony, and we got to clean it up, so I'm not going to stop until we prosecute Jim Comey. I think he is guilty. I've seen the evidence, and he needs to be prosecuted."

Sussmann, an attorney with the Perkins-Coie International Law Firm, which represented the Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, went to the FBI with a "tip" that computer servers for the Trump campaign had contact with Russian servers connected to the Kremlin-backed Alfa Bank, and that Trump was using it as a "backchannel" communication with the Russian government, the New York Times reported.

The accusation not only proved to be untrue, but the story about the computer connection likely came from the Clinton campaign itself, and Hillary approved its release to the media and Sussmann taking the claim to the FBI, who then used the leaked Clinton campaign story in the media to go to a FISA court judge to get a warrant to wiretap Trump campaign worker Carter Page, and the rest of the campaign by extension.

The crux of the case was that Sussmann told the FBI that he was not acting on behalf of any client in bringing the tip to them, but then billed the Clinton campaign for at least the taxi to and from the FBI meeting, according to the Times report.

"I told the truth to the F.B.I., and the jury clearly recognized that with their unanimous verdict today," Sussmann said following the verdict. "Despite being falsely accused, I am relieved that justice ultimately prevailed in this case."

 Grenell said that despite the Sussmann verdict, the FBI knew the information was not true, but proceeded to use it to get the wiretaps on the Trump campaign anyway.

"The leaders of the FBI knew that what they were pushing was a hoax. They pushed it anyway," he said. "They even gave the information to a FISA court."