The email was not a parody.

An FBI agent said he was ready to write up a criminal case and hunt for a prosecutor because Elon Musk asked federal employees to list five things they had accomplished at work.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has now put the message in public view, and the document deserves more than a shrug.

The February 22, 2025, email came from Kevin Gounaud, then an FBI special agent in the bureau’s Washington Field Office.

At the time, Musk was a special government employee helping lead the Department of Government Efficiency. His request was blunt: federal workers were asked to send a short account of what they had completed during the prior week.

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The FBI email released by Grassley shows Gounaud trying to turn that management exercise into a possible criminal matter. The message was written inside the bureau, identified a proposed legal theory and volunteered a path toward opening a case rather than merely criticizing Musk’s request.

Gounaud argued that Musk had used X, a private platform in which he held a financial interest, to communicate about government business. He compared that use of X to Hillary Clinton’s private email server and said Musk may have generated income from engagement with the post.

Then came the part that should stop every American cold.

Gounaud wrote that he was willing to prepare the case opening and try to find a prosecutor. He added that he was not joking.

There is an important limit to what the released record proves.

It shows an agent advocating for an investigation. It does not show that FBI leadership approved the proposal, that prosecutors accepted it or that Musk was charged with a crime.

Grassley said the case did not advance based on the records known so far.

That qualification matters. So does the fact that the proposal existed at all.

The power to open a federal criminal case is not supposed to be a political toy, a workplace grievance or a vehicle for punishing an official whose management style an agent dislikes.

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The federal government has internal ethics officers, inspectors general, employment lawyers and administrative processes. Jumping from a public work-report request to a criminal case is a remarkable leap.

Fox News reports that the Musk email was part of a larger Grassley release involving politically sensitive FBI matters from 2017 and 2025.

The records focus on former agents Kevin Gounaud, Walter Giardina and Timothy Thibault, and place the Musk proposal beside internal correspondence about Crossfire Hurricane. The outlet said Grassley presented the material during FBI oversight and that the bureau was asked for comment, giving the public a substantial new documentary trail rather than another anonymous account.

The older material raises a separate concern.

According to the released records, former agent Walter Giardina repeatedly asked to be assigned to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation into possible coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.

The 2017 FBI email set shows Giardina making at least seven requests over roughly four weeks beginning in January 2017. The correspondence includes exchanges with Thibault and supervisory agent Joe Pientka.

Grassley said the persistence undercut past assurances that agents do not select the politically charged cases they want to work. The requests also came before the investigation was transferred to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that May.

Crossfire Hurricane was later handed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller’s investigation documented extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election but did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government.

The new records do not erase every legitimate investigative question the FBI has ever pursued.

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They do strengthen the case for hard safeguards against political bias, selective enforcement and agents shopping for headline-making cases.

Those safeguards should be concrete.

Congress should demand the full routing history of Gounaud’s proposal: who received it, what legal analysis was performed, whether a preliminary inquiry was considered and who closed the matter.

The bureau should also explain how it reviews assignment requests in politically sensitive investigations and what prevents personal enthusiasm from shaping investigative decisions.

Americans do not have to admire Musk, DOGE or the five-item request to see the danger.

A federal agent with a badge, access to government databases and the machinery of prosecution wields power no online critic possesses.

That authority carries a higher duty: follow evidence, identify an actual offense and keep personal politics out of the case file.

The FBI’s credibility cannot be rebuilt through slogans. It will be rebuilt when the bureau is willing to expose bad judgment, enforce neutral standards and show the public exactly where the guardrails held—or failed.

Grassley’s release gives Congress a document, a name and a decision trail to examine.

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Now the public deserves the rest of the answer.

 

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