(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The former FBI official identified in a bombshell report about the bureau’s early scrutiny of President Donald Trump defended the agency’s actions in exclusive remarks to Headline USA.
Former FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich responded Saturday evening after Headline USA sought comment on a Racket News report disclosing the newly unclassified documents.
The FBI report shows Bowdich urging the agency’s Atlanta Field Office on Dec. 8, 2020, to interview individuals “as soon as possible” about what it described as an election probe.
The probe, launched more than a month before Trump left office, targeted his efforts surrounding the certification of the 2020 election.
Bowdich defended the bureau’s actions at the time, affirming they were carried out in a “non-partisan way, with professionalism and in the spirit of the law which was to follow the facts, no matter where they led.”
Bowdich had remained largely quiet since leaving the bureau in 2021. He is the same official who replaced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and later fired Peter Strzok.
Bowdich left the FBI to take a top executive position at Disney, where he is currently listed as executive vice president and chief security officer.
Although Bowdich’s departure kept him out of the bureau’s most aggressive actions against Trump, Racket News reported that his 2020 directive immediately triggered rapid internal movement.
“FBI agents sprung into action, alerting the public corruption unit and opening an assessment into a Georgia hearing five days earlier in which Rudy Giuliani, acting as Trump’s attorney, aired suspicions of fraudulent voting and other irregularities,” Racket News reported.
The outlet added that the FBI assessment specifically targeted the Georgia hearing in which Giuliani detailed his allegations of potential fraud in the 2020 election. Giuliani was the Trump campaign’s top attorney at the time.
The assessments did not require evidence of any wrongdoing before allowing the FBI to “deploy a range of prying methods including warrantless surveillance and confidential informants without a court order,” according to the outlet.
This report is yet another early sign that the federal bureaucracy was gearing up for a full-scale law enforcement operation against Trump.
The appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith ultimately led to Trump’s indictment. Those efforts failed, however, as Trump won a second term in 2024. Smith now faces federal and congressional investigations for alleged partisanship in his investigation into Trump.
