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On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee heard testimony from FBI whistleblowers who strongly alleged that the bureau had facilitated abuse, misconduct, and financial misallocation of resources.
Thursday’s hearing was the cherry on top of the GOP’s newly released report on the FBI whistleblower’s testimony, which asserted that the FBI had committed serious missteps in the wake of these individuals’ decisions to voice their concerns over what was going on at the bureau.
“FBI leadership pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist, while manipulating its case categorization system to create the perception that DVE is organically rising around the country,” the report stated.
According to the Washington Examiner, this categorization stemmed from the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, where DVE cases were used by the FBI to allegedly pump up the numbers of documented domestic terrorist cases nationwide.
Further, the report shared the following information:
“Whistleblowers assert that the FBI pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist, while manipulating its case categorization system to feign a national problem. At a time when the Biden Administration maintains that DVE is the ‘greatest threat’ facing the United States,18 the FBI appears to be complicit in artificially supporting the Administration’s political narrative.”
Even worse, the House report documented evidence that after Jan. 6, 2021, Bank of America provided the FBI with highly confidential customer information without any legal process.
The report revealed: “BoA gave WFO a list of individuals who had made transactions in the Washington, D.C. area using a BoA product between January 5 and January 7, 2021. Individuals who had previously purchased a firearm with a BoA product were reportedly elevated to the top of the list.”
“The FBI is incentivized to work against the American people and is in dire need of reform,” whistleblower and Special Agent Stephen Friend told the Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
According to the committee’s report, Washington Field Office ASAC Timothy Thibault and FBI former Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Division Jill Sanborn allegedly pressured agents to “move cases into the DVE category to hit self-created performance metrics.”
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, thanked the whistleblowers for their testimony. “Thank you for coming forward, sharing your story, and standing up for the Constitution, doing your duty,” he said.
