On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing on “government abuse, misallocation of resources, and retaliation of whistleblowers at the FBI.”

According to a report released by the Committee, the FBI has misused its power to infringe upon Americans’ privacy and to punish its own agents for speaking out against abuse and questioning leadership, particularly in regard to the events at the Capitol on January 6th.

FBI employees who spoke out against the “politicized rot” in the bureau had security licenses revoked and/or were suspended, said the report.

"The disclosures from these FBI employees highlight egregious abuse, misallocation of law enforcement resources and misconduct with the leadership ranks of the FBI," said the report.

According to the press release from the House Judiciary Committee:

The report builds on earlier whistleblower accounts describing the FBI’s Washington hierarchy as “rotted at its core” with a “systemic culture of unaccountability.” One whistleblower characterized the current state of the FBI as “cancerous” as the Bureau has “let itself become enveloped in this politicization and weaponization.”

 

The report also highlights how the FBI’s metric-based bonus structure leads to the improper and unnecessary use of law enforcement tools, how FBI leadership has pressured agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE) to create the perception that DVE is organically rising across the country, and how the FBI suspended whistleblowers after making good-faith, protected disclosures about agency wrongdoing.

The report said that the whistleblowers described "retaliatory conduct" against them “after making protected disclosures about what they believed in good faith to be wrong conduct.”

Two whistleblowers, Steve Friend, a former FBI special agent, and Marcus Allen, an FBI staff operations specialist, had their security clearances revoked and appeared before the Weaponization Committee on Thursday alongside Special Agent Garret O’Boyle and Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill.

According to FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle, he was suspended on his first day after moving cross-country with his family, and then had no access to any of his belongings, leaving them homeless and having to rely on others for clothing.

According to former special agent Steve Friend, he was suspended after objecting to a SWAT-team arrest of an individual suspected of entering restricted areas during the January 6th Capitol riot.

"I've arrested over 150 violent criminals in my career, I've never required a SWAT team to do it," Friend said when questioned before Congress.

Allen was suspended for conducting case-related research and sending open source links that didn’t align with the FBI’s narrative of January 6th.

"Because these open-source articles questioned the FBI’s handling of the violence at the Capitol, the FBI suspended Allen for 'conspiratorial views in regard to the events of January 6th,'" the report stated, adding that the FBI did not allow him to seek outside employment during his suspension.

The FBI sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee detailing the suspensions ahead of the hearing, claiming that Friend refused to arrest a subject, and that Allen’s security clearance was suspended over security concerns.

According to a fourth whistleblower, Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill, the FBI has over 11,000 hours of footage from January 6th, but will not release said footage “because there may be UC’s (undercover officers), or CHS (confidential human sources), on those videos whose identity we need to protect.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) pointed out that Allen’s suspension came after he sent his colleagues a link to an article saying that “federal law enforcement had some degree of infiltration among the crowds gathered at the Capitol,” commenting in the email that there were “serious concerns” if it was true.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) questioned Allen, asking if he owned a particular Twitter account. He said no, but she proceeded to question him, quoting a tweet that said that “Nancy Pelosi staged January 6.”

Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the ranking Democrat, stated that “My colleagues on the far right are on a mission to attack, discredit and ultimately dismantle the FBI,”  adding that 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.”

O’Boyle and Friend spoke to Fox’s Jesse Watters after the hearing, sharing why they came forward despite opposition and retaliation.

"We're just trying to do the right thing for this nation," O'Boyle said. “And if that means even becoming homeless at the hands of the FBI, then we're willing to do that. We're willing to sacrifice that.”

The FBI whistleblower hearing occurred the same week as the Durham report revelation that showed efforts by Democrats (in collusion with the FBI and with the Obama administration’s knowledge) to rig the 2016 election.