The FBI spent two years and $30 million trying to destroy Donald Trump – and found nothing.
Now an agent who was inside the Mueller investigation says the whole thing was rotten from the start.
And what Chuck Grassley just sent Kash Patel could finally make someone answer for it.
FBI Whistleblower Describes Mueller Team's Political Bias and "Let's Get Him" Attitude
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel laying out bombshell allegations from a December 2020 FBI interview with an unidentified agent who served on Robert Mueller's team.
The agent's word for the atmosphere inside the investigation: "bias."
Not suspected bias. Not possible bias. A documented, pervasive atmosphere of political bias – led by prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky – with anti-Trump cartoons and caricatures displayed on the office walls.
The agent even sketched out exactly where the drawings hung.
Raise your hand inside the Mueller team and you got reassigned.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe referred to President Trump in a derogatory manner during an official interview. When prosecutors tried to get agent Michelle Taylor to soften the record and strip the negative language, she refused – and left the bureau.
Mueller prosecutor Zainab Ahmad carried classified documents in her personal bag to meetings and brought her classified notebook from the Washington Field Office to her home in violation of FBI security protocols. The agent also witnessed alcohol being consumed inside the Special Counsel's office.
This is what a two-year, $30 million federal investigation looked like on the inside.
Mueller Team's FISA Warrant Abuse: Grassley Demands Answers From Kash Patel
The most legally explosive allegations involve the FBI's chronic abuse of FISA surveillance warrants.
An investigator named Khoury objected to renewing a surveillance warrant for a third time. The reason: the target was cooperating fully, telling investigators everything they needed, and the FISA wasn't producing anything. Per the whistleblower, there was "nothing in the past FISA that aided the investigation other than to prove the Target was being honest with the investigators."
The team renewed it anyway.
When agents sought a fourth warrant and the whistleblower flagged needed corrections to the application, FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith shut it down – "We can't send this to DOJ."
Clinesmith later pleaded guilty to doctoring an email used to justify a separate FISA warrant against Trump adviser Carter Page. His sentence: 12 months' probation and a brief law license suspension.
The whistleblower also alleged the Mueller team had no legal authority to open a case against Trump inaugural chairman Tom Barrack in the first place. The FBI's Washington Field Office had already reviewed the matter and declined to pursue it. Mueller's team arrested him anyway, held him in jail, and charged him with acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
A jury acquitted Barrack in 2022. He now serves as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey.
"The information provided by the whistleblower confirms long-standing concerns that political bias rotted the decision-making process within the Mueller team," Grassley wrote. "The American public deserve answers."
Grassley's letter gives Bondi and Patel a hard deadline: March 29.
He wants all relevant emails, all FISA applications, all journals, and the full "1A file" – including every anti-Trump drawing and caricature that decorated the walls of the office running the investigation into the sitting president of the United States.
What Comes Next
The whistleblower's December 2020 interview was buried inside an internal FBI probe of Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten – the same official who surfaced in both the Russia collusion investigation and the Hunter Biden laptop suppression operation.
That document sat for five years.
This is the pattern – not an isolated mistake. The Mueller team pursued people it had no authority to pursue, extended surveillance it had no justification to extend, and removed agents who objected.
Special Counsel John Durham confirmed the rot in his 2023 final report, concluding the FBI launched its Russia probe on "raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" and applied a completely different standard when scrutinizing the Clinton campaign.
The IG report had already found 17 significant errors and omissions in the FBI's FISA applications. John Durham spent four years investigating and reached the same conclusion.
Clinesmith doctored federal evidence and got probation. Everyone else walked.
Grassley's letter landed at DOJ on Sunday. The deadline is March 29. The only question left is what Pam Bondi does with it – and whether the people who ran this operation finally answer to someone other than a sympathetic jury.
Sources:
- José Niño, "Whistleblower Exposes Alleged FISA Abuse and Political Bias Inside Mueller Investigation," Headline USA, March 17, 2026.
- Miranda Devine, "Mueller probe cut corners, broke rules to 'get Trump,' whistleblower claims," New York Post, March 16, 2026.
- Chuck Grassley, Newly Declassified Appendix to Durham Report Press Release, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, July 31, 2025.
- Brian Freeman, "Whistleblower: Mueller Team Broke Rules to 'Get' Trump," Newsmax, March 16, 2026.
- "Insider Blows The Whistle On Mueller Probe," Independent Journal Review, March 16, 2026.
