FBI Whistleblower Calls House Republicans 'Soulless Demons' Voting for New FBI HQ
The FBI whistleblower, now a fellow on domestic intelligence and security services at the Washington-based Center for Renewing America, told RedState why he called House Republicans “soulless demons” after they voted for funds for a new FBI headquarters, and have not taken steps to reform the troubled bureau.
“It was a mixture of being utterly frustrated and disappointed, and the feeling of betrayal because that was one of the, albeit symbolic, gestures that I felt was insufficient,” said Steve Friend, a former FBI supervisory special agent and member of the bureau’s SWAT units.
Friend said when 70 House Republicans voted to approve $300 million towards the construction of a new Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland, it was a direct contradiction of a concrete commitment made to him by Rep. Jim Jordan (R.-Ohio), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
The whistleblower said Jordan committed to him after he testified May 18 before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of the Judiciary Committee, along with Marcus Allen, an FBI staff operations specialist and Garret O’Boyle, an FBI special agent, when the three men went to a luncheon hosted by House Republicans on the committee.
Their testimony focused on ways the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation targeted conservatives for harassment, surveillance, and any chance to pull them into criminal proceedings. Another FBI whistleblower, Kyle Serafin, has come forward with similar experiences.
“We met afterwards for a few minutes back in the majority's offices and had a lunch set up, and he basically said: ‘What do you think could be done to fix the FBI?’ and before we had a chance to answer, he said: ‘Obviously they're not going to get new headquarters.’”
The General Services Administration (GSA) began the process of building a new FBI headquarters in 2013 under the title “FBI Headquarters Consolidation," in order to take the current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, at Washington's 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, off the books.
In 2014, the GSA chose three possible sites: Greenbelt, Maryland; Landover, Maryland; and Springfield, Virginia. The agency announced Sept. 23 it had chosen the Greenbelt site, but that decision faces challenges from Virginia leaders—and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In another X-post, Friend said the reason why Wray opposes the Greenbelt site: “That location is probably a further drive to the airport for him as well. He hates sitting in traffic before abusing the @FBI jet.”
The graduate of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business said he then told the chairman, who was joined at the luncheon by representatives Matt Gaetz (R.-Fla.) and Dan Bishop (R.-N.C.), that the FBI was already building out facilities in Alabama to function as its new headquarters.
“At that point, I informed him that there was a two-and-a-half billion dollar facility in Huntsville presently that was intended to be a new headquarters,” he said. “That took him by surprise. He said they would look into what was going on with that."
Gaetz and Bishop had been involved in Friend's transcribed interview leading up to his testimony, but he said they did not weigh in. "I definitely looked at them more as being allied with us. Nobody actually spoke about our new headquarters other than what Congressman Jordan said that that was going to be a no-go, or we can get off the table.”
Gaetz brought an amendment to the House floor to defund the next phase of building the new FBI headquarters on Nov. 8.
The amendment was defeated 145-273, with both Bishop and Jordan voting in support of Gaetz's amendment.
Curiously, Springfield’s Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly voted present.
In Friend’s X-post, he shared his frustration with House Republicans using information he and the other whistleblowers provided before and after the 2022 midterm elections for their political advantage, but not for the reforms the information was meant to create.
House Republicans have tools to reform FBI, power to protect whistleblowers
Friend said the House of Representatives has tremendous power that is not being used.
“There's a lot more tools at their disposal that I think they have that they've not used,” he said. “They can defund particular individual[s'] salaries and positions and programs, and they just haven't done it.”
The Savannah, Georgia, native said there are more individuals inside the FBI with information about the political corruption of the institution. Still, when they see how previous whistleblowers and their information are treated, they are going to keep their information to themselves.
“The best thing that they can do to bring about real change and real reform is to proactively protect the whistleblowers that have come forward, to be a bulwark and advocate on their behalf,” he said.
“The only way to bring it back would be for energetic House Republicans to shift the way that they've conducted themselves so far, because their inaction so far has led to the FBI getting what it wants, and that is a shutdown of whistleblowing,” he said.
“A legitimate part of being a government employee, who swears an oath to the Constitution and to the rule of law, is to come forward if you believe that there is waste, fraud, abuse, or an unnecessary risk to the public safety,” he said.
“If you protect the guys that have already come forward, you will have more come forward as a result of the outward and public retaliation,” he said.
“There are people that are now on the inside and in a position to either verify the information that we've already brought forward or bring forward more information,” he said. “They are scared because they saw what happened to guys like Garrett O'Boyle, Marcus Allen, Kyle Serafin, and myself.”
The cost of blowing the whistle
The whistleblower chafes at the charge that he became a whistleblower to make money. He was suspended for 150 days, and the FBI took away his security clearance, making him useless at the bureau and for private security work.
“Of necessity is an acceptance of the reality that the FBI, as it presently constituted, is not going to bring me back into the fold," the former FBI SWAT member said. "Now that my clearance was revoked, the day that I testified publicly, even under a new administration, that's going to be incredibly difficult.”
When the FBI denied his request to accept the fellowship at Renewing America, his lawyer advised him to resign before taking the job without the bureau’s permission, he said.
Friend said when he testified, Democrats on the subcommittee, led by New York's Rep. Dan Goldman, attacked him and the others relentlessly. Then, when it was time for Republicans to ask their questions, they wasted their time speechifying for their local TV stations, and with the exception of Gaetz and a handful of others, did not take the opportunity to draw on the whistleblowers’ experience—building on the transcribed interviews the men conducted before the hearing.
“Democrats like Dan Goldman are willfully attacking and obstructing FBI whistleblowers,” he said.
In addition to the administrative actions taken against the whistleblowers, FBI Acting Assistant Director Christopher Dunham sent a letter to Jordan before the hearing with derogatory information about each of the men. Dunham has been one of the point men resisting oversight from the Judiciary Committee in matters such as the criminalization of parental involvement in their children's schools and the documents related to an informant’s claim Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was bribed by Burisma.
The letter was also leaked to NBC News.
Russ Vought, the president of Center for Renewing America, called for Congress to take action against Dunham, when he learned that he had revoked the clearances for the three men.
Friend said the law is supposed to protect whistleblowers, but the FBI has found workarounds and other methods to punish and slander individuals who step forward.
“I would say the FBI has taken advanced measures to stop whistleblowers to the point where now, they are identifying whistleblowers as insider threats a la Robert Hanssen,” he said.
The veteran of FBI investigations into violent crimes on Nebraska Indian reservations said it is important to remember that whistleblowers do not have to be right to be protected—they have to bring forward reasonable concerns.
“There is no question that the case that Marcus and Garrett and Kyle and myself, all of us, have made is reasonable,” he said.
“We are not protected,” he said.
“I interact with whistleblowers every single day; not one of us wanted to do anything other than work, do our jobs, and make the FBI better, and there was not a self-enrichment aspect to it at all,” he said.
“It’s inauthentic when anybody like a Goldman or somebody says that we've been personally enriched ourselves or we're bought and paid for, that we're political partisans that can be further from the truth, and it's very insulting.”
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