According to House Republicans, the FBI has suspended a whistleblower who objected to how the agency handled inquiries into the disturbance at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee stated on Twitter on Tuesday that “the FBI Suspended a whistleblower for refusing to conduct the Bureau’s political investigations.”
Screenshots from a letter addressed the day before to FBI Director Christopher Wray by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the committee’s senior Republican, were included in the post. The letter detailed claims made by an FBI whistleblower that the agency changed parts of its procedures to falsely inflate the number of domestic violence extremism (DVE) incidents reported across the United States.
“The letter claims that while all of the cases result from the same connected investigation into the events at the Capitol on January 6, the FBI’s case categorization gives the idea that dangers from DVE are prevalent in jurisdictions across the nation. Such a false case categorizing system enables FBI leadership to falsely claim that DVE threats have increased significantly across the country.”
The FBI whistleblower whose claims are described in the letter, according to a spokesman for Jordan’s office, notified Jordan’s department on Monday that the Bureau had suspended him, The Daily Wire said.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office, according to the informant, has instructed FBI field offices nationwide to launch DVE investigations into “possible suspects” connected to the January 6 violence. The Washington Field Office, however, keeps control of the probe while the other field office formally opens the case, carrying out and approving “all of the investigative work and documentation for the case file,” the whistleblower claimed, in Jordan’s letter.
According to Jordan’s letter, which cited the whistleblower, “this scheme makes it possible for you to endorse on paper your assertion that the FBI is a ground law enforcement agency, and the large majority of our investigations must continue to be performed by our field offices, even though you are basically running the investigation from Washington.”
The FBI was allegedly transferring resources from other investigations to DVE cases, according to the whistleblower. “The whistleblower remembered… being ‘told that sexual abuse of children material probes was no longer an FBI focus and needed to be directed to local police departments,’” according to the report.