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FBI whistleblowers testify to ‘politicized rot’ and retaliation at the Bureau

by Chris Lange

Chris Lange, FISM News

 

Whistleblowers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detailed shocking allegations of corruption, politicization, and retaliation at the highest levels of the FBI during testimony on Capitol Hill Thursday.

The contentious hearing included whistleblower testimony from former agents who described the depth and breadth of the bureau’s alleged targeting of conservatives in highly-charged political issues, including the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, pregnancy help center attacks, and domestic terror threats.

During the hearing, members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government played a video of deposition testimony of a former Boston Field Office official who appeared to confirm Committee members’ suspicions that the bureau planted undercover agents at the Jan. 6 Capitol demonstrations protesting the 2020 election results.

George Hill, a former intelligence analyst supervisor at the Boston Field Office, testified that the Washington Field Office (WFO) instructed him to open investigations into two organizers who arranged bus trips to the D.C. rally along with 138 passengers. Hill agreed to do so, provided that Capitol surveillance video offered evidence that they had entered restricted areas of the Capitol building. He told the WFO, however, that he would not open investigations on individuals for merely exercising their constitutional right to demonstrate peacefully.

“To which WFO said, ‘We can’t show you those videos unless you can tell us the exact time and place those individuals were inside the Capitol,’” Hill said.

He further testified that when Boston agents asked why their requests for access to 11,000 hours of surveillance video were denied, the WFO replied that “[t]here may be UCs, undercovers, or CHSes, confidential human sources, and we need to protect their identities.”

In his testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray was asked by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) if the bureau had in fact sent confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters to the rally. 

Wray did not answer the question directly and instead replied: “To the extent that there’s a suggestion, for example, that the FBI’s confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6, that’s categorically false.”

The select subcommittee also noted in an interim staff report released on Thursday that Bank of America handed over “confidential customer data” on “individuals who made transactions” in D.C. between Jan. 5 and Jan. 7. The data was provided to the bureau “voluntarily and without any legal process,” per the report.

“Individuals who had previously purchased a firearm with a BoA product were reportedly elevated to the top of the list,” it added.

BUREAU ALTERED CRIME STATS TO SUPPORT WHITE HOUSE ‘WHITE SUPREMACY’ NARRATIVE

Former Special Agent Garret O’Boyle testified that the FBI directed agents to target conservatives with surveillance and investigations and had them manipulate domestic violent extremism statistics to bolster the Biden administration’s ‘MAGA Republican’ political narrative.

The allegedly embellished stats also supported the bureau’s designation of white supremacy as the greatest threat to national security, which allowed the FBI to exponentially broaden its surveillance of conservative Americans.

O’Boyle, an Iraq war veteran, said that after he raised concerns with the bureau about the designation and its implications, he was approved for a transfer from the Kansas Field Office to the WFO. After uprooting his family, which at the time included a newborn child, he reported to the Washington office only to be suspended on his first day. 

He said that he had also questioned why the FBI was allocating resources to investigate pro-life organizations and individuals in 2022 at a time when pro-abortion activists were threatening Supreme Court Justices at their homes and setting fires to pregnancy help centers.

AGENT QUESTIONED FBI SENDING SWAT TEAM TO ARREST J6 SUSPECT

Former FBI Special Agent Stephen Friend described a near-identical experience to O’Boyle’s that followed his decision to challenge the agency’s use of a SWAT team to arrest a Florida resident on charges of entering restricted areas of the Capitol building on Jan. 6.

At one point during his testimony, Friend was grilled by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) who argued that the SWAT arrest was warranted because the suspect was allegedly tied to a militia organization.

“I’ve arrested over 150 violent criminals in my career, I’ve never required a SWAT team to do it,” Friend responded.

He, like Boyle, was suspended from the bureau indefinitely after speaking out. The FBI also refused requests by both men to seek outside work, leaving them without any means to support themselves and their families.

During the hearing, Rep. Daniel Goldman, (D-N.Y.), questioned Friend about accepting a “donation” from former Trump administration official Kash Patel. “A donation … are you a charitable organization?” Goldman asked Friend at one point.

The former agent reminded Goldman that the FBI’s actions left him without any income or resources and said that he was “trying to feed [my] family.”

“My wife had lost her job and it was Christmas time. So I don’t think that accepting charity is something I was proud to do,” Friend said. “I think that any sort of allegation that I gave up a very lucrative career in order to accept a donation several months later from an individual who I’ve never met in my entire life is quite frankly laughable,” he added.

The testimony of both witnesses painted a disturbing picture of a federal agency so politicized and corrupt that its leadership went out of its way to destroy their lives.

“To be blunt, the leadership of the FBI and the DOJ are corrupt,” Rep. Harriet Hageman, (R-Wyo.) said after listening to the whistleblowers’ testimony.  

“I will name names. [FBI Director] Christopher Wray and [Attorney General] Merrick Garland are corrupt,” she continued. “They know it. We know it. And the American people know it.”

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