The FBI has officially suspended the whistleblower who attempted to highlight and push back against the bureau’s dealings with the investigations in regard to the January 6, 2021, riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol, as reported by House Republicans.
“The FBI SUSPENDED a whistleblower for refusing to carry out the Bureau’s politicized investigations,” stated Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on social media this past Tuesday.
The FBI SUSPENDED a whistleblower for refusing to carry out the Bureau’s politicized investigations.
Can you imagine the media outrage if President Trump did this? pic.twitter.com/1dhB4nmnHz
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) September 20, 2022
The social media post sported a series of screenshots of a letter that the top Republican on the committee, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), sent over to FBI Director Christopher Wray the previous day. The letter detailed a series of allegations stemming from a whistleblower with the FBI that the bureau has changed a few of its procedures to make cases of domestic violent extremism (DVE) seem far more prevalent across the country than they actually are.
“The FBI’s case categorization creates the illusion that threats from DVE are present in jurisdictions across the nation, when in reality they all stem from the same related investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6,” stated the letter. “Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE threats nationwide.”
A spokesperson for Jordan’s office stated that the FBI whistleblower whose allegations were expressed via the letter to Jordan’s office this past Monday that the FBI had suspended him.
The whistleblower stated that the FBI’s Washington Field Office has led the FBI field offices all over the United States in order to open up DVE investigations onto “potential subjects” in relation to the events of the January 6 riot. However, while a different field office would be the one to officially open the case, the Washington Field Office still maintains control over the investigation, performing and approving “all of the investigative work and paperwork for the casefile,” expressed the whistleblower, as stated in Jordan’s letter.
“This scheme allows you to continue to support on paper your assertion that ‘[t]he FBI is a field-based law enforcement organization, and the vast majority of our investigations should continue to be worked by our field offices,’ while actually running the investigation from Washington,” stated Jordan’s letter, highlighting the whistleblower.
The whistleblower also alleged that the FBI was cutting resources from various other investigations to deal with these false DVE cases. “The whistleblower recalled … being ‘told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.’”