Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa is posting excerpts of a report about Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-OH) so-called "FBI whistleblowers" from the alleging "deep state" conspiracies at the FBI.
A report this week from The New York Timesrevealed that the three "aggrieved former FBI officials who have trafficked in right-wing conspiracy theories, including the Jan. 6, 2021 attack at the Capitol and received financial support from a top ally of former President Donald J. Trump."
As part of his ongoing effort to bring down Joe Biden's government, Merrick Garland's Justice Department and the FBI itself, Jordan is running the committee on the "weaponization of government."
"The Committee has now heard from three of these so-called whistleblowers," the report says. "George Hill, a retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst from the FBI's Boston Field Office; Garret O'Boyle, a suspended FBI special agent from the Wichita Resident Agency in Kansas; and Stephen Friend, a former special agent with the FBI's Daytona Beach Resident Agency. None of these witnesses has provided evidence of misconduct by the FBI, the Department of Justice, or any other public official. Each offered a wide range of personal opinions, but to the extent that they testified about matters to which they claim to have firsthand knowledge at all, none showed any evidence of wrongdoing."
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Instead, the report implies that they're merely former employees with an axe to grind and being paid to serve as Jordan's "whistleblowers."
The report also says that the men have also been "directly connected to a network of extreme MAGA Republican operatives including former Trump administration officials Kash Patel, Russell Vought, and Mark Meadows, who have incentive to promote these witnesses and their meritless claims..."
Patel paid both O'Boyle and Friend "$5,000 almost immediately after they connected in Nov. 2022. Patel has also promoted Friend's forthcoming book on social media."
Patel also helped connect Donald Trump's "top election-fraud lawyer," Jesse Binnall, to O'Boyle to help serve as counsel. O'Boyle appeared shocked that the representation was "pro bono." Patel helped Friend score a job as a fellow for the Center for Renewing America, run by Vought and funded by the Conservative Partnership Institute and run by Meadows and lobbyist and former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).
While Jordan has called these men "whistleblowers," committee Republicans refuse to provide any documentation to prove that they have filed for whistleblower protections with the Department of Labor.
Rangappa went on to tell Raw Story that based on what she's read thus far, "none of them meet the legal definition" for a whistleblower, "and it appears that they did not pursue to proper channels (like the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility) to have their whistleblower' claims evaluated."
She pointed out comments from Friend that encourage defunding the police, claiming in a Tennessee podcast interview that the FBI "needs to be control, alt, deleted and completely eliminated and eradicated from the federal government."
Hill retired in Oct. 2021, but he told the panel he heard through the grapevine that there was a financial institution that could be related to Jan. 6 investigations. He couldn't answer questions about where the information came from, he had no evidence, no specifics, never used the evidence himself in an investigation, never saw any documents about it and never worked on any cases around Jan. 6 before his retirement.
Hill claimed that the Washington Field Office of the FBI asked the Boston office to help with Jan. 6 investigations. When asked about the Boston office's involvement, he confessed he wasn't part of any of those conversations and that the request was only as far as he had heard. The report argues this doesn't show any weaponization of government.
The report also noted that "on at least two occasions, Friend engaged with Russian journalists and propaganda outlets while still an FBI employee." He spoke to Russia Today's John Kiriakou, who agreed to a plea deal in 2012 for "one count of intentionally disclosing information identifying a covert agent," the Justice Department said in a 2013 release. He had previously been charged with "two counts of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it," a 2012 DOJ release said.
When asked if Friend was familiar with Sputnik, he responded, "It's a Russian propaganda newspaper." He then confirmed he gave answers to questions from Ekaterina Blinova without authorization from superiors.
The report goes on for 316 pages of details about the three men, discounting their accounts as anything other than opinion and hearsay.
Meanwhile, Jordan is requesting taxpayers fund an additional $2 million a year for his committee and a "substantial reserve fund" of $15 million for the investigations, Axios reported Tuesday. He's also demanding 16 FBI agents testify before the committee.
