Unreliable sources: FBI’s string of embarrassing failures with left-wing sources exposed
Jerry Dunleavy
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The FBI has faced a string of embarrassing failures in recent years by relying on shaky left-wing sources to take investigative actions, leading to Republicans arguing that the bureau has been deeply politicized.
Last week’s saga, in which FBI headquarters was forced to disavow a local FBI field office’s intelligence memo that sought to link “radical-traditionalist Catholics” with domestic terrorism, was the latest example of the bureau relying on questionable sources when pursuing high-profile and politically charged investigations.
The FBI also hinged a significant part of its Trump-Russia investigation on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier, Attorney General Merrick Garland was spurred to issue a controversial school boards protest memo based on a since-withdrawn letter by the National School Boards Association, whistleblowers have said agents inside the bureau wrongly sought to downplay or dismiss evidence against Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election, and more.
“Radical Traditionalist Catholics”
FBI headquarters distanced itself from a local field office’s intelligence report that warned about the alleged connection between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditionalist Catholics.”
An FBI intelligence product released on Jan. 23 by the bureau’s field office in Richmond, Virginia, claimed the office “assesses the increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) in radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwires and source development.”
FBI headquarters told the Washington Examiner on Thursday: “This particular field office product … does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI. Upon learning of the document, FBI Headquarters quickly began taking action to remove the document from FBI systems and conduct a review of the basis for the document.”
The local FBI field office had repeatedly cited the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, including an article on “Radical Traditional Catholicism.” The field office also pointed to articles by left-wing writers at Salon, including “White Nationalists Get Religion” and “Traditional Catholics and White Nationalist ‘Groypers’ Forge a New Far-Right Youth Movement.” And FBI Richmond also cited an Atlantic article by a left-wing writer on “How Extremist Gun Culture is Trying to Co-Opt the Rosary.”
A coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general led by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares quickly sent a letter to Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, telling them that “anti-Catholic bigotry appears to be festering in the FBI, and the bureau is treating Catholics as potential terrorists because of their beliefs.”
The disavowal email from FBI headquarters was sent to the Washington Examiner just after the start of a Thursday congressional hearing by the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Ex-FBI agents testified there that the bureau had become steadily politicized in recent years.
The Dossier
The FBI used Steele’s discredited dossier to obtain four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants and renewals targeting Trump campaign associate Carter Page, and fired FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pushed to include the dossier’s baseless collusion allegations in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election meddling.
During all this, the FBI concealed the extent of Steele’s anti-Trump biases from the FISA Court.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in 2019, “The FBI was aware of the potential for political bias in the Steele election reporting from the outset of obtaining it.”
Ex-DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who served as a conduit between Steele and the FBI even after the former MI6 agent was cut off as a confidential human source, told the bureau by late November 2016 that Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. president.” The DOJ watchdog noted that during a 2017 interview with the FBI, Steele described Trump as his “main opponent” and that an FBI analyst said this was “clear bias.”
FBI analyst Brian Auten, who interviewed Steele’s main source, Russian lawyer Igor Danchenko, in early 2017 and was there when the Justice Department set up a partial immunity agreement with Danchenko, was among the FBI employees who interviewed Steele in Rome in early October 2016 as the FBI sought more details on the dossier. Auten revealed last year that the FBI had offered Steele an incentive of up to $1 million if he could prove the allegations of collusion in his dossier and if the evidence led to prosecutions, but Auten said the former MI6 agent was unable to corroborate any of his dossier claims.
Nevertheless, the FBI continued to use the dossier and defend Steele and made Danchenko, who had previously been investigated over his possible links to Russian intelligence, a paid confidential human source from 2017 to 2020.
TOP TWITTER EXEC REVEALS KEY INFO ON HUNTER BIDEN CENSORSHIP DECISION
School Board Protests
A since-withdrawn NSBA letter in 2021 spurred Garland to direct the FBI and the DOJ’s National Security Division to help police alleged threats against school board members, with Republicans arguing the letter was the product of collusion between the Biden White House and the national school boards group, which later renounced it.
Garland revealed in 2021 that the DOJ and the White House communicated about the September 2021 NSBA letter just before he issued his October 2021 memo, with the NSBA letter urging the DOJ to look into deploying the PATRIOT Act “in regards to domestic terrorism” against protesting parents. Garland’s memo said it would “discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.”
An email exchange between an NSBA board member and the NSBA’s treasurer claimed that their letter was written in response to “a request by” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.
Internal emails showed some NSBA board members objected to sending the letter to President Joe Biden, and the school boards group withdrew and apologized for the letter. Dozens of chapters left the NSBA in 2021 in protest of the seemingly politicized actions of the group’s leadership.
Garland doubled down on his memo during congressional testimony in 2021, arguing that NSBA’s follow-up apology “does not change the association’s concern about violence and threats of violence.”
An email provided by an FBI whistleblower indicated the FBI was using some counterterrorism tools to carry out Garland’s directive, showing the Counterterrorism Division had created a “threat tag” for FBI officials to use.
The FBI and the DOJ’s National Security Division downplayed their roles in carrying out Garland’s order in 2022.
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The Laptop
The New York Post reported in October 2020 that emails from the laptop showed evidence of shady business dealings by Hunter Biden tied to Ukraine and China. When the publication attempted to post the articles on its Twitter account, the social media company said doing so violated its rule against sharing “hacked” materials.
Former Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, who had previously been the FBI’s general counsel under Comey and played a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation, defended his and Twitter’s actions related to the Hunter Biden laptop censorship saga last week, contending there was no “unlawful collusion” between Twitter and the FBI or the Biden campaign.
Baker seemed to lean in favor of censoring the laptop stories in October 2020, telling Twitter colleagues that “it’s reasonable for us to assume that” the laptop materials “may have been” hacked “and that caution is warranted.”
In December 2020, now-former Twitter executive Yoel Roth detailed meetings he had with the FBI and the intelligence community in the lead-up to the 2020 election, and he claimed that “the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.”
Roth had also claimed he learned in those “meetings” about “rumors” that a “hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.” But last week, Roth said the rumor had not originated with some other yet-unnamed tech company at one of the meetings.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told Wray last year that whistleblowers provided convincing evidence of “a deeply rooted political infection” that “has spread to investigative activity into former President Trump and Hunter Biden.”
Whistleblowers said Timothy Thibault, the former FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” in October 2020, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.” Wray said he found these whistleblower allegations “deeply troubling” when asked about them in August.
Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert and former Secret Service agent, conducted an examination of the Hunter Biden laptop for the Washington Examiner last year, concluding with “100%” confidence that “the hard drive is authentic.”