A whistleblower from the Federal Bureau of Investigation told Project Veritas founder and President James O’Keefe in a recorded interview posted late Wednesday that the FBI’s “direction” in recent months “troubles a vast majority of the agents.”
The source—a current FBI agent with counterintelligence, counterterrorism and criminal experience—came forward with new information about the FBI’s investigation into Project Veritas over Ashley Biden’s lost diary.
Armed FBI agents raided and ransacked two Project Veritas journalists’ homes on November 4, on the orders of federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and raided O’Keefe’s apartment in Mamaroneck, N.Y., a couple of days later in connection with the allegedly stolen diary.
The whistleblower provided O’Keefe with internal FBI documents concerning his case, and told him Project Veritas “appears to be a victim of political undertakings.”
He said the documents were given to him by a sympathetic colleague who also believed there was a “political vendetta” against O’Keefe’s organization.
O’Keefe has contended that he and his journalists were targeted because of their investigative journalism.
The special agent told O’Keefe that investigations into news organizations are “not common,” and the few that are investigated are almost always tied to “threat countries.”
The documents show that the Bureau labeled Project Veritas as “news media” in its investigation, even though the government said in a court filing that Project Veritas does not engage in journalism. The government’s filing specifically stated, “Project Veritas is not engaged in journalism within any traditional or accepted definition of that word,” because its reporting is “non-consensual.”
Under this non-media classification, government lawyers argued that the actions taken by the feds “to surveil, raid and seize materials from Project Veritas journalists were appropriate.”
The whistleblower said it was “alerting” that the FBI categorized the investigation into Project Veritas internally as a Special Investigative Matter (“SIM”), which is an investigation into a public figure, political official (involving corruption or a threat to national security), a religious or political organization, someone in academia, or the news media. All SIMs have to be signed off on by an supervisor and legal counsel, he explained.
The investigation was also classified under Threat Band I, which is usually reserved for “threat issues that are likely to cause the greatest damage to national interests or public safety in the coming year,” the agent said.
The document, which lacks certain information due to the restricted classification of the file, also shows the investigation was launched the same day Ashley Biden’s Attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said, “This is insane. We should send to SDNY,” in response to a request for comment on the contents of Ashley Biden’s diary.
The FBI also used its Cellular Analysis Survey Team (CAST) tools, which includes cellular geolocation tracking of phone devices, to secretly surveil Project Veritas journalists, according to the whistleblower and as revealed on the leaked document.
The FBI Special Agent told Project Veritas that he came forward because “there are a number of very troubling things that are happening within the FBI, and I would say that the direction the agency is headed troubles a vast majority of the agents.”
He stressed that the FBI wields an “incredible” amount of power, and if used wrong “the country cannot sustain its largest law enforcement agency.”
The agent explained to O’Keefe the difference between a criminal investigation and an intelligence investigation.
A criminal investigation is pretty straightforward, he said. “There’s an allegation, information that indicates a crime happened. We either have a victim, or a subject that engaged in it and you try to prove that case.”
An intelligence investigation, according to the G-man, is much more open to abuse. “The intelligence investigation is meant for information,” he explained. “And the knowledge doesn’t have to be actionable. It doesn’t have to be operational in what we call tactical information.”
And even if a subject hasn’t done anything wrong, he said, knowledge about him could be “forever logged in a computer system” at the FBI.
“I would hope that we could end up with a nonpartisan law enforcement agency in this country that’s not doing things that seem to be inappropriate for the power that it wields,” the whistleblower told O’Keefe.
“We cannot have partisan investigations and using a piece of the executive branch as a weapon,” he added.
“Tyranny happens incrementally, and it happens by a bunch of people agreeing to small injustices over and over simply to keep their paycheck and their pension,” the whistleblower said.
“It’s a really really dangerous step that if you’re willing to accept incremental tyranny and small abuses of your authority, you take the pensions, and you’ll walk it to wherever that dark end is,” he continued. “I don’t have a problem with people who think they’re doing the right thing. I have a problem with people who are doing the wrong thing, and they know it.”
When asked what his message would be to other FBI agents, he said, “You took an oath, you gotta live it. You’re the only one who’s going to answer for it.”