‘Politicized bureaucracy’ has FBI ‘rotted at its core,’ GOP charges in shocking report.
The FBI is “rotted at its core,” has a “systemic culture of unaccountability” and is full of “rampant corruption, manipulation and abuse,” according to whistleblowers cited in a damning report released Friday by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.
The report, which runs 1,050 pages with appendices, amounts to a preview of coming investigations should Republicans win back the House in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
“America’s not America if you have a Justice Department that treats people differently under the law,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Friday morning. “It’s supposed to be equal treatment under the law. That’s not happening and we know it’s not happening because 14 brave FBI agents came to us as whistleblowers and told us what exactly is going on here.”
In the document, GOP lawmakers accuse the bureau’s top brass of pursuing a “woke, leftist agenda” by artificially inflating the number of domestic extremism investigations, burying the investigation into first son Hunter Biden, and forcing out conservative employees.
“Quite simply, the problem — the rot within the FBI — festers in and proceeds from Washington,” the report’s introduction read. “[T]he FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, have become political institutions.”
The report also charges that the FBI:
- Has a secret partnership with Facebook in which the bureau receives private user information from the social network without the user’s consent or other legal processes.
- Has “looked the other way” on nearly 70 violent attacks against anti-abortion groups and facilities, while selectively enforcing federal law to arrest and charge pro-life activists.
- Is “abusing its counterterrorism authorities” to investigate parents who spoke up at school board meetings to protest the implementation of mask mandates and curricula focused on critical race theory.
In the case of Hunter Biden, the report claims the first son “received preferential treatment from federal law enforcement, who seem to have turned a blind eye to the potential national security threats presented by his business dealings with Chinese, Russian, and other foreign nationals.”
The report repeats whistleblower allegations initially flagged by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), that former FBI agent Timothy Thibault “shut down” the Hunter Biden probe and attempted to prevent it from being reopened.
“According to whistleblowers and other information, Thibault has allowed his political bias to infect and steer his decision-making at the FBI,” reads the report, which also claims Thibault and another top FBI official “pressured agents” to reclassify investigations as probes into domestic extremists to boost their chances of awards and promotions — even when those cases didn’t fit the bureau’s own criteria.
In one of the report’s most stunning claims, one whistleblower recalled being told after the Jan, 6, 2021 Capitol riot that child sex abuse investigations “were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.”
“This decision to ignore such serious crimes is a dereliction of the FBI’s mission to investigate violations of federal laws and a disservice to the victims of child sexual abuse crimes,” the report says.
Another section of the report deals with alleged moves by the FBI to squelch dissent related to its investigation of the Capitol riot and punish employees who attended the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse shortly before the violence broke out.
According to the whistleblowers, the FBI has stripped employees who attended the rally of their security clearances — in effect, suspending them indefinitely. At least two of those employees attended the rally while on leave, “did not enter the United States Capitol, have not been charged with any crime, and have not been contacted by law enforcement about their actions.
“Given these facts, it is deeply concerning that the FBI would question the allegiance of these employees and move to suspend their security clearances,” the report reads.
Another decorated agent was allegedly suspended for espousing “his personal views that the FBI was not being entirely forthcoming about the events of January 6,” leading the bureau to conclude they held “conspiratorial views” and question their “allegiance to the United States.
“In at least one case, the report alleged, a suspended FBI employee was not told why their clearance was being taken away, but was told “there was no right of review or even the opportunity to appeal the decision.”