Biden DOJ, FBI are broken
“Broken” is how a new report by the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee describes the FBI under the aegis of Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland. The 1050-page report, entitled FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS: WHAT THEIR DISCLOSURES INDICATE ABOUT THE POLITICIZATION OF THE FBI AND JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, was officially released on Friday. It places the blame not on the front-line field agents but on Wray and Garland and the politicized bureaucracy and hierarchy within the agency. The report wastes no time outlining examples of abuses, starting in the executive summary:
The FBI is artificially inflating statistics about domestic violent extremism in the nation. Whistleblowers have described how FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria. They also explained how the FBI is misrepresenting the scale of domestic violent extremism nationwide by categorizing January 6th-related investigations as organic cases stemming from local field offices, instead of all related to one single incident. In both ways, the FBI is fueling the Biden Administration’s narrative that domestic violent extremism is the biggest threat to our nation.
The FBI is abusing its counterterrorism authorities to investigate parents who spoke at school board meetings. Whistleblowers disclosed how, shortly after the National School Boards Association urged President Biden to use the Patriot Act against American parents, the FBI Counterterrorism Division set up a special “threat tag” to track school board-related cases. Whistleblowers provided evidence of how the FBI opened investigations into one mom for allegedly telling a local school board “we are coming for you” and a dad simply because he “rails against the government” and “has a lot of guns.”
The FBI has abused its foreign intelligence authorities to spy on American citizens, including people associated with the campaign of President Trump in 2016. These facts have been documented in Inspector General reports and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions, but there is little indication the FBI has changed—or is willing to change—course.
The FBI is clearing the Bureau of employees who dissent from its woke, leftist agenda. The FBI is actively seeking to “purge” FBI employees holding conservative views—or, in President Biden’s view, those who are a “threat to American democracy” because they hold conservative views. The FBI has even taken retaliatory actions against at least one whistleblower who has spoken out.
Whistleblowers have explained how the FBI’s “political meddling” “is dragging the criminal side [of the Bureau] down” as resources are “pulled away” from real law-enforcement duties. As a prime example, one whistleblower described how he was “told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies” so that he could work a Washington-directed politically charged case instead. Such a mis-prioritization is not only a dereliction of duty, but it is a grave disservice to the victims of crimes that do not advance the FBI’s political agenda.
The report also notes that it is impossible to investigate abuses by the FBI without also investigating the DOJ. The report cites the FBI creating a “threat tag” to track parents who spoke out about their concerns over school policies at the behest of Merrick Garland. It also notes that the FBI has had what it calls a “troubled history, dating back to J. Edgar Hoover and the surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and its move to becoming an intelligence-driven organization after September 11, 2001.
Investigations were run out of the headquarters and not the originating field offices, according to the report. Notably, the report cites the trend started by Robert Mueller of placing bureaucrats in leadership positions and not trained agents. It accuses Christopher Wray of failing to fix the leadership problems and restore trust in the agency. The report also acknowledges that whistleblowers have been saddened by developments in the FBI and suggests that there are many more issues that may be uncovered in the coming months. The executive summary concludes by stating that there is a need to fix the “broken culture” and “out-of-control hierarchy” at the agency. There is a full page devoted to urging whistleblowers to speak out with a phone number to reach Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.
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There is much more.
This is what happens when an administration politicizes law enforcement and targets its opposition rather than going after real criminals.
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