An FBI special agent was reportedly stripped of his credentials and escorted out of the FBI’s field office in Daytona Beach this Monday after his in-house complaints about impropriety were ignored and he subsequently filed a bombshell whistleblower complaint with Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Obtained and reviewed by the New York Post, the whistleblower complaint from Steve Friend, a 12-year FBI veteran and SWAT team member, paints a picture of a corrupted FBI that cares more about politics than about solving serious crimes.
Friend specifically accuses the FBI of effectively “manipulating” the public by making the one-day Jan. 6th riot appear far more troubling than it really was.
For instance, the FBI’s Washington, D.C. office has been “farming out J6 cases to field offices across the country to create the false impression that right-wing domestic violence is a widespread national problem that goes far beyond the ‘black swan’ event of Jan. 6, 2021,” according to the Post.
Worse, the FBI has reportedly prioritized this operation over more concerning cases such as those involving child sexual exploitation.
#BREAKING: New whistleblower information reveals that the FBI is moving agents off of child sexual abuse investigations to instead pursue political investigations.
The whistleblower recounted being told that “child sexual abuse investigations were no longer an FBI priority.” pic.twitter.com/EBXrnVWhO6
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) September 20, 2022
The whistleblower described how a “manipulative” practice by the FBI overstates the DVE threat nationwide by categorizing Jan 6-related cases as originating in field offices around the country rather than “stemming from a single, black swan incident” in Washington, D.C.
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) September 20, 2022
Friend “says he was removed from active investigations into child sexual exploitation and human trafficking to work on J6 cases sent from DC. He was told ‘domestic terrorism was a higher priority’ than child pornography. As a result, he believes his child exploitation investigations were harmed,” the Post notes.
But the FBI’s alleged manipulation goes way beyond just case management. According to Friend, the bureau is opening Jan. 6th investigations into 100 percent innocent Americans based on veritable hearsay.
“ FBI domestic terrorism cases are being opened on innocent American citizens who were nowhere near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, based on anonymous tips to an FBI hotline or from Facebook spying on their messages. These tips are turned into investigative tools called ‘guardians,’ after the FBI software that collates them,” according to the Post.
“ The FBI intends to prosecute everyone even peripherally associated with J6 and another wave of J6 subjects are about to be referred to the FBI’s Daytona Beach resident agency ‘for investigation and arrest.'”
Revealing all this in a whistleblower complaint has cost Friend his “dream career.” So has standing up for the rights of conservative Americans.
“He was declared absent without leave last month for refusing to participate in SWAT raids that he believed violated FBI policy and were a use of excessive force against Jan. 6 subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses,” according to the Post.
“I have an oath to uphold the Constitution. I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector,” he reportedly told his supervisors at the time.
Column’s up: FBI hero paying the price for exposing unjust persecution of conservative Americans https://t.co/sIxHTiMv4j
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) September 22, 2022
His supervisors did not care for his complaints. They said it’d have been better for him to just “call in sick” rather than express his discomfort.
They also “threatened reprisal indirectly by asking how long I saw myself continuing to work for the FBI,” the whistleblower complaint reportedly reveals.
His supervisors also dismissed his complaints about the “manipulative casefile practice.”
“At no point was I advised or counseled on where to take my disclosure beyond the reprising officials above; the threatened reprisal constituted a de facto gag on my whistleblowing,” the whistleblower complaint reads.
However, his supervisors did forward his complaints to their supervisors, which in turn led to him getting chewed out by said top honchos — Coult Markovsky and Sean Ryan.
“They asked if he believed any J6 rioters committed crimes and he replied: ‘Some of the people who entered the Capitol committed crimes, but others were innocent. I elaborated that I believed some innocent individuals had been unjustly prosecuted, convicted and sentenced,'” according to the Post.
“Markovsky then asked Friend if J6 rioters who ‘killed police officers’ should be prosecuted, even though no such thing happened. When Friend pointed out that ‘there were no police officers killed on January 6, 2021,’ Markovsky told him he was being a ‘bad teammate.'”
“Bad teammate” or not, the only one who was killed during the Jan. 6th riot was a rioter who was shot at point-blank range by a U.S. Capitol Police officer.
Friend says both Markovsky and Ryan “threatened reprisal again by warning that my refusal [to go on the SWAT raid] could amount to insubordination. References were made to my future career prospects with the FBI.”
He also says a large number of his colleagues share his concerns but are remaining quiet because they’re closing in on their 20-year retirement with full pension.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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