Gingrich: FBI Statement on FISA Memo 'Open Rebellion'

The FBI's decision to issue a statement saying it has "grave reservations" about releasing a Republican memo detailing the agency's abuses of federal law during its surveillance of one of President Donald Trump's campaign aides was an act of "open rebellion," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday.

"If you want an example of the deep state, you apparently had the head of the FBI go to the White House with the deputy attorney general, make his case to the White House, his superiors in the executive branch and get turned down," Gingrich told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."

FBI Director Christopher Wray then put out a release, and "in effect, it's an open rebellion."

"You have the director of the FBI putting out a release attacking the president for what the president has apparently decided to do, because he didn't listen to the head of the FBI," said Gingrich. "This is a level of bureaucratic deep state resistance that when you're dealing with the FBI and the Justice Department, it is a threat to the civil liberty of every American if they go rogue."

Further, Gingrich said, Trump should rename the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building, because the late FBI director "was the personification of spying on Americans, including Martin Luther King Jr., and using secret information for political power."

Renaming the building " for a civil libertarian, and remind the FBI that it isn't "above the law" and can't fight the president in public.

"That breaks up the whole concept of an executive branch and is clearly a violation of the Constitution," said Gingrich.

Gingrich said he does believe the memo will be made public in the next day or two, and he thinks Trump was wise to hold off, which allowed Americans to "focus on how brilliant the State of the Union was."

Once the memo comes out, he added, "the elite media will quit covering everything else" and fixate on it.

"It comes out unless the president stops it," said Gingrich. "It is pretty clear he is not going to stop it. I think that he doesn't have to say much about it. It will speak for itself. And I think that we are going to find out based on everything we've heard so far, we're going to find some very sobering things about how illegal the practices were during the 2016 campaign."

• Report: Trump to Declassify Surveillance Memo Despite FBI Opposition
• Dem Rep. Schiff: Nunes Sent Altered Memo to White House