New York Post, May 19, 2023

Democrats attack FBI whistleblowers — giving cover to the agency’s abuses

by James Bovard

Congressional Democrats revealed a new federal crime Thursday: having the same name as anyone who tweeted derisively about the Jan. 6 Capitol Clash.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), vice chair of the House Equality Caucus championing LGBTQI+, sought to demolish FBI whistleblower Marcus Allen for retweeting a post asserting “Nancy Pelosi staged January 6.” When Allen repeatedly stated that wasn’t his Twitter account, Sanchez berated him for interrupting her tirade.

After she finally seemed to admit it wasn’t his account, she demanded to know if Allen agreed that Pelosi staged Jan. 6. Allen said no, and Sanchez’s time expired.

This epitomizes how congressional Democrats treated FBI whistleblowers in Thursday’s House Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee hearing. Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the ranking Democrat, howled, “My colleagues on the far right are on a mission to attack, discredit and ultimately dismantle the FBI.”

She claimed Republicans “have brought in these former agents, men who lost their security clearances because they were a threat to our national security — who out of malice or ignorance or both have put partisan agenda above the oath they swore to serve this country and protect its national security.”

The Durham report this week exposed the FBI’s brazen machinations to rig the 2016 election. But all the FBI’s sins have been expunged, at least for Team Biden supporters. It was unclear Thursday whether congressional Democrats consider FBI critics to be traitors or heretics or maybe both.

Allen, an FBI staff operations specialist who served two tours in Iraq with the Marines, was suspended without pay after the FBI condemned him for having “conspiratorial views in regards to the events of January 6th.”

His crime? As part of his research task, he forwarded a link to an open website that said “federal law enforcement had some degree of infiltration among the crowds gathered at the Capitol.” (Which it did.)

But you can’t blame Marcus Allen for the FBI’s bizarre Boston bus dragnet.

FBI Washington Field Office pressured the FBI Boston office to open investigations on 138 bus passengers who traveled to DC Jan. 6, 2021, merely because “two individuals [on the buses] entered restricted areas of the Capitol that day.” Boston FBI officials responded by asking for video showing the wrongdoing, especially since there was no evidence the passengers had even entered the Capitol.

FBI Washington replied that it couldn’t supply video because it might disclose undercover agents or confidential human sources in the crowd. In lieu of providing evidence, FBI bosses wanted agents across the nation to presume anyone who was suspected was automatically guilty. Rep. Matt Gaetz declared, “Violence on January 6 doesn’t justify weaponizing the government against people who were innocent and did nothing wrong.”

FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle, a 101st Airborne Division member and veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, was suspended after he was compelled to divide a single domestic-terrorism case into “four different cases” to bolster the Biden narrative of a vast terrorist threat. Boyle testified that FBI management “creates an Orwellian atmosphere that silences opposition and discussion.”

A committee staff report declared that “the FBI appears to be complicit in artificially supporting the Administration’s political narrative” that domestic violent extremism is “the ‘greatest threat’ facing the United States.”

Another witness was Steve Friend, a 12-ear FBI veteran and SWAT team member who was suspended without pay in September after complaining the FBI was falsifying data on domestic terrorism. Friend lamented last year the leftist tilt of FBI management: “There is this belief that half the country are domestic terrorists and we can’t have a conversation with them. There is a fundamental belief that unless you are voicing what we agree . . . you are the enemy.”

FBI Assistant Director Christopher Dunham says Friend was suspended after he “downloaded documents from FBI computer systems to an unauthorized removable flash drive” and refused to participate in Jan. 6 cases.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) condemned Democrats for disparaging the witnesses.  Massie groused, “Big business is working with the government to weaponize against the American people.” He hammered Bank of America for sending the FBI a list of all its customers’ charge or debit cards used in Washington between Jan. 5 and 7, 2021. Massie complained that anyone who had ever purchased a firearm with a Bank of America card was “elevated to the top of the list” — even if the purchase occurred in Iowa in 1999.

The FBI denies retaliating against whistleblowers. But O’Boyle bitterly declared, “The FBI will crush you . . . and your family, if you try to expose the truth about things they are doing that, are wrong.”

O’Boyle told the committee: “I never swore an oath to the FBI. I swore my oath to the Constitution.” Perhaps someone should remind House Democrats that, likewise, their oath was to the Constitution and not to the FBI. Unfortunately, the FBI can count on a vast Praetorian Guard on Capitol Hill to prevent Americans from learning how their rights and liberties have been trampled.

James Bovard is the author of 10 books and a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.