OPINION:
This week, the report of special counsel John Durham revealed that the FBI opened an investigation and spied on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign based on flimsy, unevaluated intelligence information. The bureau’s top brass was so convinced of Russian collusion that they turned a blind eye to exculpatory evidence and trusted Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a possible Russian counterintelligence threat for information to obtain search warrants. One FBI official falsified evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Trump aides.
The rank and file understood that the inquiry was politically motivated.
“Damn, that’s thin,” one FBI official wrote in August 2016, according to the Durham report.
“I know,” replied another, “it sucks.”
Mr. Durham wrote that FBI personnel admitted, “both then and in hindsight — that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target [the Trump campaign] was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power.”
Yet the investigation moved ahead, prompting a special counsel that plagued the Trump administration for two years before concluding that no collusion evidence could be found.
On Thursday, it became clear why no one in the bureau had the wherewithal to question their superiors.
Garrett O’Boyle, an FBI agent, veteran and former police officer, filed whistleblower complaints with his bosses and Congress, which ended in his being placed on “unpaid, indefinite suspension,” according to testimony before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
The agent and his family were left “homeless,” with his belongings held in limbo by the FBI, in retaliation for him reporting the bureau improperly increased domestic terrorism case totals for political purposes and was keeping a close eye on anti-abortion activists.
“All I wanted to do is serve my country by stopping bad guys and protecting the innocent,” Mr. O’Boyle testified. “To my chagrin, bad guys have begun running parts of the government, making it difficult to continue to serve this nation and protect the innocent.”
In March, it was revealed that the FBI’s Jan. 6 investigation is the biggest in U.S. history — and that it’s only half done. To date, nearly 1,000 people have been charged, with new charges possible against as many as 1,000 more people.
Steve Friend, a former FBI agent, was one of many agents assigned to the investigation. Last August, Mr. Friend made whistleblower disclosures to his supervisor regarding how the Department of Justice handled such cases.
“I believed our departures from case management rules established in the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide could have undermined potentially righteous prosecutions and may have been part of an effort to inflate the FBI’s statistics on domestic extremism,” Mr. Friend testified. “I also voiced concerns that the FBI’s use of SWAT and large-scale arrest operations to apprehend suspects who were accused of nonviolent crimes and misdemeanors, represented by counsel, and who pledged to cooperate with the federal authorities in the event of criminal charges created an unnecessary risk to FBI personnel and public safety.”
One month after Mr. Friend made the disclosures, he was removed from active duty and placed on indefinite, unpaid suspension, and the FBI “initiated a campaign of humiliation and intimidation to punish and pressure me to resign.”
Marcus Allen, another former agent, was accused of holding “conspiratorial views” regarding Jan. 6 after he forwarded an article to his superiors questioning the official narrative of the day’s events.
“As a result, I was accused of promoting ‘conspiratorial views’ and ‘unreliable information,’” Mr. Allen testified. “Because I did this, the FBI questioned by allegiance to the United States.”
Mr. Allen, who was the FBI’s employee of the year in 2019 in the Charlotte, North Carolina, field office, was suspended in January 2022.
Earlier this month, Sen. Chuck Grassley demanded the FBI produce an unclassified record alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national after another, unspecified whistleblower came forward.
“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States. What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims for investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement.
Indeed. And perhaps a reduction in its budget and the cancellation of its proposed new headquarters until such transparency — and accountability of its top brass — is achieved.
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