Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Friday released a 1,050-page report on alleged FBI misconduct, based primarily on the testimony of whistleblowers within the agency.
The report, titled “FBI Whistleblowers: What Their Disclosures Indicate About The Politicization of the FBI And The Justice Department,” began by stating that the FBI “is broken” under the leadership of Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Wray’s superior, while also blaming the “politicized bureaucracy” of the agency. It accused Garland and Wray of overseeing an agency that “altered and mischaracterized evidence to federal courts, circumvented safeguards, and exploited weaknesses in policies.”
The report identifies several key areas for oversight as Republicans are poised to take the House majority after the midterm elections. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee have already promised investigations into the FBI and intelligence community over the handling of the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the surveilling of school board meetings, among other topics.
In the executive summary, the report quoted FBI whistleblowers who spoke to Republican staff on the committee, led by Ranking Member Jim Jordan of Ohio, claiming that the FBI was “rotted at its core” and maintained a “systemic culture of unaccountability” as well as being full of “rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse.” It also alleged that the FBI may be inflating statistics on the incidence of violent extremism across the country, as well as diverting resources away from criminal investigations towards more politically-relevant areas.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the stewardship of Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, is broken.
Read our 1,000 page report on just how bad it is. https://t.co/fKmSYWBdLb
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) November 4, 2022
Some of the allegations leveled in the report include the contention that the FBI “manufactured” a controversy about domestic violent extremism, by “orchestrating” the failed plot to kidnap Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, which was foiled in 2020. It also alleges that the Bureau attempted to minimize allegations of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden, who is currently being investigated for tax-related felonies by Delaware’s U.S. Attorney, David C. Weiss, a holdover from the Trump administration.
Other allegations include the “purging” of conservative employees who dissent from the FBI’s efforts to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion,” which the report terms as a “woke agenda.” Such programs in federal agencies have been heavily criticized by Republicans, who claim that the bias violates the freedom of conscience of conservative federal employees who may disagree with them.
One FBI employee alleged to the committee they were told by their FBI superiors “that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.” Another claimed that an FBI program, codenamed “Operation Bronze Griffin,” was an illicit partnership between the FBI and Facebook, where the Bureau allegedly accepts private user information from Facebook, but without the user’s consent or legal process.
The report’s release comes at a time when the FBI is under heavy scrutiny from Republicans in Congress for a variety of reasons. The FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, in August, prompted several allegations of improper procedure – including that the FBI took materials under attorney-client privilege – and the appointment of a Special Master to review the documents seized.
The bureau was also scrutinized after an alleged order issued by Garland to the FBI to surveil, under counterterrorism authority, parents being involved in school board meetings in Northern Virginia. Many parents have attended school board meetings to criticize the prevalence of contested concepts regarding race and gender in curricula, which has been supported by Republicans.
In response to a request for comment, the FBI wrote that “we follow the facts without regard for politics. While outside opinions and criticism often come with the job, we will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, do things by the book, and speak through our work.”
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