Is Something Very Wrong Inside the FBI?

Photo: Hakan Copur - Agencia Anadolu

Two stories this week have got me wondering, “Is the FBI okay?” And that is never a question we want to be asking.

The first is a report by the Washington Post that revealed internal conflicts between prosecutors and FBI agents over whether and when to search Mar-a-Lago for classified documents still retained by ex-president Trump. Unlike in most cases, where prosecutors try to rein in aggressive investigators trying to break a case, here it was the FBI agents who were putting up road blocks and causing delay—pushing to end the inquiry, dragging their feet and staunchly opposing the actual execution of the search warrant. This answers some troubling questions about why it took so long to finally conduct the search, even while raising others about the bias of certain agents in favor of the former president.

The second is a massive and detailed report by Democratic members of the new House “Weaponization of the Federal Government” subcommittee, run by renowned protector of institutional integrity Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). The report calls into serious question the credibility of three FBI “whistleblowers.” These GOP “star witnesses” for this subcommittee claim they were penalized for their conservative political viewpoints, particularly around January 6. The facts, however, show a disturbing connection between the witnesses and dangerous conspiracy theories, as well as apparent sympathy for domestic terrorist organizations and the receipt of questionable funding from right-wing activists.

Let’s look at these two new stories a bit deeper and then crack open the normally black box of the Justice Department a bit to see what they reveal.

Reluctant FBI agents on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case

In May 2022, per the Washington Post, FBI agents at the Washington Field Office urged the Department to slow down its case given the sensitivity of the matter. By June, the agents were in full revolt, arguing that the entire case should be shuttered. Why? Because Trump, they claimed, had already complied with the subpoena. After all, they argued, Trump’s lawyers had asserted that they had conducted a diligent search and returned all classified materials from Mar-a-Lago.

That turned out to be a lie, of course, as video evidence of such materials being moved out of the storage room later showed. The Trump lawyers who were part of the obstruction have since been hauled before a federal grand jury to testify, with Special Counsel Jack Smith preparing to counter attorney Evan Corcoran’s claims of attorney-client privilege by asserting the crime-fraud exception to the privilege. 

It is highly unusual that FBI agents would argue to close a case simply because lawyers for the potential target of the search claimed everything was hunky-dory. If that were all it took to stop a warranted search, imagine the consequences. 

A charitable reading assumes FBI agents and officials were worried about the scrutiny they would face, given the already tarnished reputation of the Bureau after its missteps and leaks in 2016 around the Hillary Clinton email server investigation. But that shouldn’t be a reason to delay or halt an investigation, especially one involving such high stake national security concerns.

A less charitable view is that the FBI's reluctance and hesitation, deferring to a known liar and his mendacious lawyers in the face of common sense, cost the Department valuable time. Had the investigation been closed in June 2022, as they argued it should have been, those documents would probably still be at Mar-a-Lago and vulnerable to retrieval by foreign enemies.

The FBI “whistleblowers” were actually dangerous elements within the Bureau

Rep. Jordan promised with his “Weaponization” subcommittee to expose a “deep state” conspiracy against conservative FBI agents who refused to toe the Biden Administration line. But the three witnesses produced so far by Jordan actually raise a different, quite serious question, “Who the hell is working inside the FBI in such important positions?” As The New York Times noted,

[T]he trio appears to be a group of aggrieved former F.B.I. officials who have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and received financial support from a top ally of former President Donald J. Trump.

This was a record scratch moment. The Democratic committee member’s report indicates that right-wing ideologues were in charge of investigating and executing orders on cases involving their fellow ideologues, including cases around January 6.

Some of Jordan’s “whistleblowers” initially connected—and this should surprise no one—through a community of unvaccinated employees. And all of them, it turns out, actively let their politics get in the way of their jobs. These weren’t heroic whistleblowers; they were active impediments to justice.

Take former agent Stephen Friend, who worked in the Daytona Beach office in Florida. Friend was part of a group of agents who were placed on leave and gave themselves the name “the suspendables.” Why was Friend suspended? He objected to using a SWAT team to arrest a member of the “Guardians of Freedom” which is an offshoot of sorts from the radical “Three Percenters” who were part of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Friend’s objections were that bringing in a SWAT team to arrest the suspect was like “using an elephant to kill a mouse,” that the optics would make it appear as though “half the country are potentially domestic terrorists,” and that it would chill participation “in a political dialogue.” 

But where a suspect is known to own a gun and is accused of a felony, the FBI has good reason to use a SWAT team. And as an FBI spokesperson told CNN, “Employees who don’t carry out their responsibilities are held accountable through an objective administrative process,” and the FBI is “required to follow established policies and procedures, to include a thorough investigation, when suspending or revoking a security clearance.”

Or take George Hill, another supposed “whistleblower,” who supervised intelligence analysts on cases relating to January 6. Hill criticized a bank for sharing records of people who were in DC on that date, even though it is routine to collect evidence of bank transactions to show travel and location of suspects. He also raised concerns about a request to open investigations into two buses of people who traveled to DC, citing the First Amendment and protected activity. 

Most tellingly, Hill deleted tweets saying “insurrection my a$$. It was a set up and sadly, there’s no shortage of idiots willing to take the bait.” He retweeted a post that fed conspiracies about implanted “Antifa” that were supposedly “Pelosi’s buddies.” In interviews with the subcommittee Democrats, Hill cited his own First Amendment right to make the statement.

Then there’s Garrett O’Boyle, who was suspended for making an unauthorized media disclosure. Boyle refused to elaborate on what that disclosure was or even say what his allegations against the FBI as a “whistleblower” were. But there are some clues. After the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, the FBI shifted a “threat tag” that addressed threats on Supreme Court justices to focus instead on abortion rights opponents. Boyle apparently had problems with this, as well as with instructions to take steps on a January 6 case, which he said he didn’t want to do.

Notably, Boyle claims to have been receiving financial help in the form of legal fees paid by former Trump official and obsequious sycophant Kash Patel. Yet Boyle’s lawyer told the subcommittee he was working pro bono. If no one was paying him, is Patel currently providing direct financial support to this chief GOP witness? The record already shows that Patel helped Stephen Friend with a $5,000 “gift” and connected him with the Center of Renewing America, where Patel is a senior fellow.

These witnesses don’t demonstrate that the Department discriminated against them because of their conservative political views. Their testimony instead reveals that these agents let their political views interfere with their work and cause them to disobey directives. And that is very worrisome to hear, mostly because it is unclear how widespread this kind of insubordination is within the Bureau.

These two stories together make me wonder further whether, behind the scenes, the Justice Department might be expending considerable energy just trying to keep its own house in order and bring rogue elements in line. When added to the scandal of Charles McGonigal, the former New York head of FBI counterintelligence, being on a Russian oligarch’s payroll, and now indicted on several corruption charges, a worrisome pattern emerges. 

It suggests that one of the biggest impediment to the proper and efficient functioning of justice in America may be elements within the Department itself who might be actively working to undermine it. We should keep this in mind when weighing the important questions, “Why is everything taking so long?” and “Why don’t they just arrest the criminals?” The more we learn, the more it becomes clear that some of the gravest dangers to our democracy may come from inside the very institution charged with protecting it.