Who is FBI Agent Timothy Thibault?
Just The News and other media outlets are reporting that Tim Thibault — FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge — was escorted from bureau premises on Friday (we covered the story here). According to Ben Whedon of JTN, the reported removal of Thibault comes “amid whistleblower allegations that he showed political bias in his handling of politically sensitive investigations.”
The Washington Times reported eyewitness accounts that “Mr. Thibault was seen exiting the bureau’s elevator last Friday escorted by two or three ‘headquarters-looking types.'” The article appears to have been updated and now states that Thibault “abruptly resigned” but that he was “forced to leave his post” and cites two unnamed former FBI officials.
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Whistleblowers alleged that Thibault concealed the partisan nature of evidence from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland to secure their approval to open an investigation into former President Donald Trump. That investigation culminated in the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month.
As we know, there have been numerous reports in recent months leading up to the Mar-A-Lago raid of FBI whistleblowers reaching out to Congressional offices complaining of a political environment that allegedly sought to downplay negative news about the president’s son Hunter Biden and his now infamous laptop. GOP Senator from Iowa Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter July 25 to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland detailing the allegations he said were voluminous and consistent enough to be credible.
In October 2020, one month before the election, “an avenue of derogatory Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed” by a senior FBI agent at the bureau’s Washington Field office. An earlier letter from Grassley identified the agent as Timothy Thibault.
“[T]he allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” Grassley claimed.
He said whistleblowers from federal law enforcement came forward to his office after a May 31 letter he had written noted a “pattern of active public partisanship in his then public social media content,” in reference to Thibault.
In that May 31 letter, Grassley also accused Thibault of likely violations of “[f]ederal laws, regulations and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) guidelines.”
“Whistleblowers have reported to me, that although the FBI and Justice Department maintain policies dictating specific standards requiring substantial factual predication to initiate an investigation, Thibault and other Justice Department and FBI employees failed to comply with these requirements.”
FBI whistleblowers seem to have fingered Thibault as the partisan hack protecting Hunter. The FBI, we now know, were recently identified by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the reason Facebook downplayed the laptop story pre-election because the social media company had the impression the laptop story was considered misinformation. But It turns out Thibault has also been involved in some other interesting work on behalf of the agency. Here’s a clip from the FBI Portland twitter account in which Thibault, rather hilariously in hindsight, talks about what the FBI had been doing to combat election fraud.
As news breaks the DOJ is admitting some documents seized at Trump’s Florida home could be covered by attorney-client privilege, the FBI whistleblowers seem to have struck a very large blow against an agency that has been behaving in ways seemingly outside their enforcement purview. Republican Rep. Jim Jordon of Ohio, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, has also been fielding FBI whistleblower allegations and has indicated his intention, should the GOP win the House in November, to investigate both the agency itself and the Justice Department in general.
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