Republican congressman slams Paul Ryan for betraying Trump by defending the 'deep state

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) bashed House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for saying that President Donald Trump was incorrect in accusing the FBI of illegally infiltrating his campaign with informants for the sake of political gain.

Here's what Gaetz said

Appearing on the Lou Dobbs show Wednesday, Gaetz offered a scathing critique of what he saw as Ryan's betrayal of the president.

"There is no defense today for Paul Ryan siding with the FBI and Department of Justice over against those of us in the Congress who are working for transparency and accountability," Gaetz said. "[Rep.] Devin Nunes [R-Calif.] for example, has been asking for a year for the documents that go to the very heart of this Trump Russia hoax. As we sit here today Lou, members of Congress have not seen the documents that show why this investigation even began."

Gaetz went on to explain why he believed the foundations of the investigation into the Trump campaign were faulty.

'A defender of the deep state.'

"And there is no way any criminal prosecution could ever be brought against this president based on the bias and the mishandling of evidence," Gaetz continued. "But instead of our speaker standing with us and putting the focus on the FBI's refusal to turn over documents so that we can perform our oversight duties, instead, he was defending the FBI, and that is deeply frustrating to me. We need the speaker to be an institutionalist for the Congress, not to be a defender of the deep state."

"And he is that, and he is a defender of K Street and Wall Street and the Koch brothers,” Dobbs agreed. “The man has sold out, he’s been obviously sold out for years."

Stop defending the FBI

"The silence from our very own speaker is deafening," Gaetz responded. "Speaker Ryan needs to step up, he needs to join us in a call for a second special counsel, and for goodness sakes, stop defending the FBI's collection of intelligence on the Trump campaign when they refuse to give us the documents to show whether or not they broke the law."

Gaetz concluded saying that he was hearing for the first time from his colleagues in the Congress that they might need to replace Ryan as the House Speaker.

Here's the segment with Gaetz and Lou Dobbs: