What is your thoughts on Whistleblowers? The newest against Biden.

[*Nately120*]

Are we going to go into the conspiracy that Biden is making people "disappear" like the Clintons did?

[Arturo Bandini]

(05-15-2023, 01:11 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Are we going to go into the conspiracy that Biden is making people "disappear" like the Clintons did?

Pretty sure the answer in on Hunter's laptop.

[GMDino]

So the whistleblowers are being paid?

Interesting.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Hold on - aren’t these the same folks who want single moms on food stamps and diabetic grandma and grandpa to get jobs before they’ll give them any “government freebies”?<br><br>But they’re paying an “informant” because he’s got a baby? <a href="https://t.co/PN2OF5EFAx">pic.twitter.com/PN2OF5EFAx</a></p>&mdash; Jo? (@JoJoFromJerz) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoJoFromJerz/status/1659179897607057409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2023</a></blockquote> 

[GMDino]

More on the whistle blowers...and why many doubt their stories.

https://ktvz.com/news/2023/05/18/jim-jordans-fbi-whistleblowers-to-testify-publicly-before-congress-as-questions-about-their-legitimacy-remain/

Quote:The first three FBI “whistleblowers” to testify in front of the Republican-led committee investigating the “weaponization” of government received money from an ally of former President Donald Trump—and have a history of spreading an “alarming series of conspiracy theories related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, the Covid vaccine, and the validity of the 2020 election,” according to a copy of a lengthy report by House Democrats obtained by The New York Times. These supposed bombshell witnesses, touted heavily by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), have shared little original information about the agency’s inner workings, the report suggests—and given their status as former officials, likely do not even meet the proper definition of a whistleblower. Two of the three even testified that they were paid thousands of dollars by Kash Patel, a former Trump Administration official. Republicans on the panel accused Democrats of “cherry picking” excerpts from the former agents’ testimony.

Read it at The New York Times

[/url]
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jim-jordans-fbi-whistleblowers-paid-by-trump-ally-spread-conspiracies-report-says

Quote:By Annie Grayer, Alayna Treene and Sara Murray, CNN


(CNN) — Three self-described FBI whistleblowers who are key to the Republican narrative that the FBI is weaponized against conservatives will testify in a House hearing on Thursday, the latest escalation of House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan’s investigation into allegations of discrimination and bias within the FBI.


The hearing comes one day after the FBI said it revoked the security clearances of three agents who either attended the January 6 2021, riot at the US Capitol or espoused alternate theories about the Capitol attack, according to a letter the FBI sent the subcommittee on Wednesday, a copy of which was obtained by CNN.



At least two of those agents – Marcus Allen and Steve Friend – are among the individuals testifying before the panel on Thursday.


Jordan, an Ohio Republican, [url=https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/legacy_files/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HJC_STAFF_FBI_REPORT.pdf]has long touted the allegations of what he claims are “dozens” of whistleblowers who serve as the basis for his committee’s assertions that the FBI and Justice Department have become increasingly politicized in recent years. But the first individuals who sat for closed-door interviews with Jordan’s subcommittee earlier this year, including two of the whistleblowers who will appear publicly at a hearing Thursday, became an early flashpoint in the panel’s investigation, with Democrats raising questions about their legitimacy as whistleblowers and the credibility of their testimony.

“We’re looking forward to having these whistleblowers in public for the first time,” Jordan told CNN. “We’re going to let them tell their story, because they have definitely been retaliated against, and in some cases it’s really bad.”


The hearing comes as House Republicans look to ramp up pressure on the FBI executive assistant director of human resources, Jennifer Leigh Moore, after her first voluntary interview, according to a letter provided exclusively to CNN.


Republicans have claimed that Moore was part of a “purge” of FBI employees with conservative views and that issuing her a subpoena is justified because she refused to answer questions in her first interview with the panel. According to an FBI letter obtained by CNN, Moore offered to appear for an interview a day before the hearing – when she could share more information about specific cases – and the committee opted not to proceed with the follow-up interview.

Moore also shared that she has the security clearances of approximately 38,000 employees under her purview and only 32 are currently on suspension, according to an excerpt of her transcript provided exclusively to CNN. Moore said roughly 50 security incidents come in a week, which has been “pretty much” standard in recent years.


The hearing is also an opportunity for Republicans to spotlight an issue their base cares about.


GOP Rep. Mike Johnson, who serves on the panel, says his constituents ask him “all the time” why he can’t do more to address what they see as the politicization of the federal government.

“I explain every day when I’m back home, I am just a member of Congress,” he told CNN. “We only have the majority in one House of Congress. I don’t have the ability to indict anyone, to arrest them or put them on trial or court. What I do have a responsibility is oversight, and putting these facts on display and putting these issues on trial in the court of public opinion.”

The four witnesses

Allen, an FBI staff operations specialist, had his security clearance suspended in January 2022 after voicing support for the January 6, 2021, insurrection of the US Capitol, according to a copy of the suspension letter sent to Allen and obtained by CNN.


“The Security Division has learned you have espoused conspiratorial views both orally and in writing and promoted unreliable information which indicates support for the events of January 6th,” the letter reads. “These allegations raise sufficient concerns about your allegiance to the United States and your judgment to warrant a suspension of your clearance pending further investigation.”


Allen has filed a lawsuit against FBI Director Christopher Wray claiming that the agency has violated his constitutional rights and has falsely accused him of holding “conspiratorial views.”


The FBI officially revoked Allen’s security clearance on May 3 and listed a variety of reasons for doing so, including a September 29, 2021, email in which Allen called on FBI officials to exercise “extreme caution and discretion in pursuit of any investigative inquiries or leads pertaining to the events of” January 6, according to a copy of the letter.


In revoking his security clearance, the FBI said its investigation showed Allen had “questionable judgment, unreliability, and unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations,” indicating that he could not properly safeguard classified or sensitive information.”


President of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton, whose group filed a lawsuit on Allen’s behalf, said in a statement to CNN, “Mr. Allen was a top employee of the FBI. And he was punished because he was doing his job. And I think Americans are going to see an American hero who was just trying to do the right thing and got his head handed to him.”


Friend, a former FBI agent working out of Florida, had his security clearance suspended in September 2022 for objecting to using a SWAT team to arrest a subject whom the FBI said was at the Capitol illegally on January 6. Friend, in a previous interview with CNN, said the force was unnecessary against an individual who had committed a misdemeanor offense.


As CNN previously reported, Friend filed a whistleblower complaint to the Justice Department inspector general and a claim with the US Office of Special Counsel following his suspension, the function of which is to protect federal employees making whistleblower complaints. His claims were eventually rejected by both entities.


Friend had his security clearance revoked by the FBI on May 16, according to the letter obtained by CNN. In explaining its decision, the FBI revealed that Friend “entered FBI space and downloaded documents from FBI computer systems to an unauthorized removable flash drive” on September 3, 2022. Friend also participated in “multiple, unapproved media interviews, including an interview with a Russian government news agency” and recorded a meeting with FBI management that may have violated Florida state law, the FBI wrote. The FBI said it made its decision to revoke Friend’s security clearance after interviewing Friend, his coworkers and a review of Friend’s social media activity.


Rachel Semmel, the spokesperson for the Center for Renewing America, where Friend is a senior fellow, told CNN, “It’s no secret that Steve’s courage and honesty is a threat to the FBI’s corruption which is why they’re rolling out their best lies and misinformation.”


Both Allen and Friend have 30 days to request reconsideration of the FBI’s decision.


Suspended FBI agent Garret O’Boyle has not revealed his direct disclosures or FBI suspension notice to House Democrats, according to transcripts reviewed by CNN. When asked about his allegations against the FBI during his closed-door interview with the weaponization subcommittee earlier this year, O’Boyle said they were confidential.


A member of the subcommittee, Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, told CNN he wants to ask about the extent the whistleblowers that have come forward are tied to Trump world.


“I am very interested to determine what degree of coordination there has been between these whistleblowers and the committee and other associates of Donald Trump,” he said. “So, we’ve got a lot of questions for them, both about the substance of their claims and about their bias.”


Fellow Democratic subcommittee member Rep. Gerry Connolly said that House Republicans have “failed to establish anything” with whistleblowers’ accounts.


The fourth individual testifying on Thursday is Tristan Leavitt, the president of Empower Oversight – an organization that is legally representing a series of whistleblowers who are in communication with Congress, including Friend.


Leavitt previously worked in the Office of the Special Counsel under Trump, where he says he helped reform the office’s whistleblower disclosure program. He also worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee under former chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican – including on the “Operation Fast and Furious” investigation – as well as served on the House Oversight Committee under former chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, where he worked on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.


The-CNN-Wire
& 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

[GMDino]

Let's face some facts:

Jim Jordan is not smart.

This whole show hearing is going horribly for the gop because they let Jordan run it.

This why our thoughts on the whistleblowers were that we'd have to see if they actually had anything.

They don't have anything.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Rep. Goldman (D-NY) after Judiciary Chair Jordan blocks Dems seeing witness testimony at “Weaponization of the Federal Govt.” hearing:<br><br>“Where is the whistleblower exception in the rules?”<br><br>Jordan: “It’s the prerogative of the committee.”<br><br>Goldman: “It’s the rules of the House.” <a href="https://t.co/A714zxnLdR">pic.twitter.com/A714zxnLdR</a></p>&mdash; The Recount (@therecount) <a href="https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1659209380016041985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2023</a></blockquote> 

[Dill]

(05-18-2023, 01:55 PM)GMDino Wrote: Let's face some facts:
Jim Jordan is not smart.
This whole show hearing is going horribly for the gop because they let Jordan run it.
This why our thoughts on the whistleblowers were that we'd have to see if they actually had anything.
They don't have anything.

Well Dino, your previous post shows they do have proof the FBI went after an agent because of his "political beliefs," which forbid following orders and adhering to operational security. And we would not even know about this if the Republicans had not taken back the House.

Friend, a former FBI agent working out of Florida, had his security clearance suspended in September 2022 for objecting to using a SWAT team to arrest a subject whom the FBI said was at the Capitol illegally on January 6. Friend, in a previous interview with CNN, said the force was unnecessary against an individual who had committed a misdemeanor offense.. . . 

... the FBI revealed that Friend “entered FBI space and downloaded documents from FBI computer systems to an unauthorized removable flash drive” on September 3, 2022. Friend also participated in “multiple, unapproved media interviews, including an interview with a Russian government news agency” and recorded a meeting with FBI management that may have violated Florida state law . . .

You say people doubt their stories, but I don't doubt at all that this guy told the FBI he would not participate in arresting one of the patriots who attacked the Capitol. Putin likely sympathized with his take on the patriots when this agent, without clearance, aired his grievances on our adversary's national TV. Does anyone really believe the FBI would suspend a registered Dem's security clearance for doing that? 

The American public, 38% at least, are likely left speechless by such clear evidence of political bias. Will they see the FBI's determination that this guy is erratic, unreliable, and cannot be trusted with classified info on FBI operations, for what it is--just another favor to Biden? 

As promised, this IS all very surprising. Betting Jim Jordan has more surprises for us. Breaking news every week about what his committee will prove the next week. Witnesses, testimony documents . . . it's all coming . . . .

[NATI BENGALS]

(05-19-2023, 12:42 AM)Dill Wrote: Well Dino, your previous post shows they do have proof the FBI went after an agent because of his "political beliefs," which forbid following orders and adhering to operational security. And we would not even know about this if the Republicans had not taken back the House.

Friend, a former FBI agent working out of Florida, had his security clearance suspended in September 2022 for objecting to using a SWAT team to arrest a subject whom the FBI said was at the Capitol illegally on January 6. Friend, in a previous interview with CNN, said the force was unnecessary against an individual who had committed a misdemeanor offense.. . . 

... the FBI revealed that Friend “entered FBI space and downloaded documents from FBI computer systems to an unauthorized removable flash drive” on September 3, 2022. Friend also participated in “multiple, unapproved media interviews, including an interview with a Russian government news agency” and recorded a meeting with FBI management that may have violated Florida state law . . .

You say people doubt their stories, but I don't doubt at all that this guy told the FBI he would not participate in arresting one of the patriots who attacked the Capitol. Putin likely sympathized with his take on the patriots when this agent, without clearance, aired his grievances on our adversary's national TV. Does anyone really believe the FBI would suspend a registered Dem's security clearance for doing that? 

The American public, 38% at least, are likely left speechless by such clear evidence of political bias. Will they see the FBI's determination that this guy is erratic, unreliable, and cannot be trusted with classified info on FBI operations, for what it is--just another favor to Biden? 

As promised, this IS all very surprising. Betting Jim Jordan has more surprises for us. Breaking news every week about what his committee will prove the next week. Witnesses, testimony documents . . . it's all coming . . . .

Jesus.

They will make up anything to try to make the current day Republican party look like a joke.

[Dill]

(05-19-2023, 01:57 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Jesus.

They will make up anything to try to make the current day Republican party look like a joke.

The "whistleblowers'" testimony proves beyond reasonable doubt that 

the Bidens are a crime family, and the FBI is corrupt, in Biden's back pocket. 

And they are biased against agents who side with sedition. 

No one gets to see the transcripts, though, regardless of the law and House rules. 
https://www.salon.com/2023/05/18/you-are-not-entitled-to-it-jordan-hearing-blows-up-after-he-withholds-whistleblower-testimony/

[GMDino]

(05-05-2023, 11:40 AM)GMDino Wrote: Obviously I agree with these two but I'll add that if these whistle blowers are like the the last witnesses ones Jim Jordan said he had, but didn't produce or produce interviews with I wouldn't hold my breath.

When there is proof then we'll move forward.

https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-whistleblower-senate-judiciary-russia-giuliani-leak-trump-allies-fuks-biden-2023-8

Quote:Exclusive: A veteran FBI agent told Congress that investigations into Giuliani and other Trump allies were 'suppressed'

Mattathias Schwartz 
Aug 9, 2023, 4:19 PM EDT

A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent says his supervisor told him to stop investigating Rudy Giuliani and to cut off contact with any sources who reported on corruption by associates of former President Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower complaint obtained by Insider.

The agent, who served 14 years as a special agent for the bureau, including a long stint in Russia-focussed counter-intelligence, claims in a 22-page statement that his bosses interfered with his work in "a highly suspicious suppression of investigations and intelligence-gathering" aimed at protecting "certain politically active figures and possibly also FBI agents" who were connected to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.

Those figures, the statement claims, explicitly included "anyone in the [Trump] White House and any former or current associates of President Trump."

The statement, which was prepared for staffers of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was apparently leaked and posted in mid-July to a Substack newsletter. Insider has independently obtained a copy of the complaint and verified its authenticity, but has not corroborated all of its claims.

In an interview with Insider, the whistleblower said he was motivated by a desire to improve the FBI, which he called "essential, as imperfect as it is," because of its sweeping power to hold "policymakers accountable, whether they're on the left or the right."

"This is a decision point," he said. "Are we going to do public corruption or not?"

Insider is withholding the name of the whistleblower because he has made claims about retaliation from the FBI, where he remains an employee, and because he is in the process of seeking whistleblower protections from Congress. 
"It's highly unfortunate that this statement wound up being leaked and published," said Scott Horton, an attorney representing the whistleblower. "We're in the preliminary stages of a confidential process. I'm unable to make any other comment." 

The whistleblower told Insider that he was finally ordered to stop investigating Giuliani and the rest of the Trump White House in August 2022, after months of what he says were persistent efforts to frustrate his work, at a meeting with three FBI supervisors at a bureau field office. Insider was able to confirm the agent's account of the meeting with a second source with knowledge of what took place.

The meeting had been called to discuss the 14-year veteran's job performance. As one of the bureau's few Russian-speaking counterintelligence specialists, he maintained a network of overseas sources that had been utilized by agents across the country to investigate everything from money laundering to political corruption, according to his statement.
He said his work had been recognised with eight consecutive years of "excellent" or "outstanding" performance appraisal reports running from 2010 to 2018,  and he had been tapped to help verify information obtained by investigators working for Robert Mueller during his time as special counsel.

But in the August 2022 meeting, he was called onto the carpet to discuss "performance issues and concerns" and given suggestions for how to improve, according to the agent's account provided to lawmakers. The directions he received included a strict prohibition on filing intelligence reports relating to Giuliani or any other Trump associate.

The 2022 meeting was the culmination of what the agent viewed as a years-long effort to frustrate his investigations into potential wrong-doing by political figures in Trump's circle, stretching back to Trump's stint in the White House. In January 2022, he had filed an internal complaint under the Whistleblower Protection Act alleging "numerous acts of intelligence suppression of my reporting related ot foreign influence and the Capital riots, retaliatory acts and defamation of my own character."

 
In one case, the statement says, the agent developed information from confidential informants that Giuliani had allegedly done paid work for Pavel Fuks, a Ukrainian oligarch and "asset of the Russian intelligence services." (That charge was previously reported by Rolling Stone.) The whistleblower also looked into claims that Giuliani had fraudulently raised money from investors to produce a never-completed film about Joe Biden in the months before the 2020 election.

The agent's reporting on Giuliani wasn't received well in the bureau's New York field office, his statement says. "In the midst of my reporting involving Giuliani, which had previously been identified by my supervisor as 'high impact,' my management told me they received a call from a supervisor in [the New York field office], who they did not identify," the statement says. "This supervisor had taken issue with my reporting."

The whistleblower says he doesn't know who the upset supervisor was. But he blames "a group of people surrounding [Giuliani] with existing or historical ties to the bureau" for a pattern of "retaliatory action."  The statement points to Charles McGonigal, the now-indicted former head of FBI counterintelligence in New York, as one possible source of the apparent "suppressive efforts."

Spokespeople for Giuliani, Fuks, and Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment; nor did attorneys representing Fuks and McGonigal.

The FBI's national press office declined to comment.


Not only did the agent's superiors order them to stop working on these leads, according to the complaint and other documents reviewed by Insider, they also ordered, in early 2022, that the FBI informant who had provided the best intelligence on Giuliani's activities be "closed" — cut off from further FBI contact. According to the statement, that order came from the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force or FITF, a headquarters-based unit established by Director Christopher Wray in 2017 and charged with combating foreign influence. 

It remains unclear how much of the friction described by the whistleblower's statement stems from left versus right as opposed to field versus headquarters. The month the whistleblower's bosses ordered him off Trumpworld investigations was a pivotal one for the Bureau's investigations of the former president. On August 8, their agents executed a search warrant on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, recovering over 100 records with classified markings that would become key evidence in his first federal indictment; a special counsel-led prosecution led to a second Trump indictment in early August over efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Giuliani too was raided by the FBI, in April 2021, although that probe concluded without charges in late 2022. 

Months before the agent was told to stop looking at Giuliani and the rest of Trump's circle, he met with the same high-ranking supervisor to pass on information he had received from his confidential sources about Hunter Biden and his ties to Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that had paid Hunter Biden $83,333 a month to sit on its board. "My supervisors were delighted that I had collected this information about Burisma," the agent wrote in his statement.

But when the agent tried to talk about what their sources had to say about Giuliani, his boss's reaction was very different.
The supervisor "forcefully interrupted me and ended my presentation," he wrote.

The whistleblower's story offers a different perspective than the one laid out by three other FBI whistleblowers who testified before the GOP-led Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, some of whom have admitted accepting financial support from right-wing groups. Those whistleblowers complained that the bureau was biased against Trump and his supporters, that the crackdown on January 6 insurrectionists went too far, and that they had faced retaliation from the bureau for their conservative views. 

In the interview with Insider, the new whistleblower said that he had approached the GOP subcommittee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan. But when the subcommittee's staff learned from the whistleblower that the Hunter Biden information had been handled appropriately, their interest dwindled, the whistleblower said.

"The FBI made a diligent attempt to run the Biden material to the ground," the whistleblower said. "It wasn't slow-played. Chairman Jordan should not be using this as an example to show that the FBI is biased against the right."

Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Jordan, denied the whistleblower's allegations that the committee was cherry-picking witnesses who claimed to be able to implicate Biden.

"We would under no circumstance ever tell a whistleblower that we weren't interested in their story," Dye said. "We have had plenty of whistleblowers come forward about issues not relating to the President." Dye said the committee was still weighing what to do with the information that the whistleblower had given them.

Even before the emergence of this new whistleblower, there has been ample evidence of individual FBI agents with pro-Trump partisan sympathies. Jared Wise, an FBI supervisor who left the bureau in 2017, now stands accused of joining the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, breaking into the Capitol, and shouting "kill 'em! Kill 'em!" as rioters as they attacked the Capitol Police line.

Further up the chain of command, bureau leadership — perhaps intimidated by Trump's "deep state" rhetoric and his treatment of former senior FBI personnel like James Comey and Peter Strzok — has resisted investigating the former president. A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year passed before the bureau formally opened a probe into connections between the Trump White House and the January 6 violence. Other reporting by the Post showed that senior FBI officials attempted to push back on plans by Justice Department prosecutors to search Mar-a-Lago without Trump's permission. Some FBI agents were reportedly satisfied by an assertion made by Trump's legal team that he'd turned over all his classified documents, and wanted to close the Mar-a-Lago government records investigation down.


The FBI is ideologically diverse and decentralized, with 35,000 employees spread out across 56 field offices from Anchorage to San Juan. The glimpse of one field office provided by the new whistleblower could be more indicative of a risk-averse bureaucracy struggling to balance its law-enforcement duties with its increasingly fragile public image than a politically motivated cover-up.

The whistleblower recounts how one of his sources, code-named Genius, had won the trust of racist extremists whom the bureau investigated for their role in the January 6 violence. Genius was able to do so because he had credibility on the far-right political fringe. Nevertheless, the whistleblower claims, the FBI ordered that the source be closed, supposedly for making the same kinds of "inappropriate" comments on social media that had earned him access to some of the leaders of the insurrection.

The agent's decision to make a formal statement to Congress appears to have been a last resort. He previously approached the FBI's internal ombudsman with his concerns. In December 2021, he submitted an official whistleblower complaint to the head of his field office. Under federal law, that complaint should have protected him from internal reprisals. But according to his account, his superiors responded with punishments, disciplining him for errors in paperwork and reassigning him to a new post outside of his longtime area of expertise, one that required a multi-hour commute from his home.

Those experiences, he told Insider, are part of what compelled them to share what he knows with Congress, not to harm the FBI but to improve and correct public misperceptions.

"There are people in the FBI who are biased," he said. "We aren't robots. But the bureau itself has integrity. It's necessary. Despite the scars that I bear, I believe that the majority of my colleagues are doing the right thing."

---

Mattathias Schwartz is Insider's chief national security correspondent. 

AS I said before:  I'll add that if these whistle blowers are like the the last witnesses ones Jim Jordan said he had, but didn't produce or produce interviews with I wouldn't hold my breath.


When there is proof then we'll move forward.