Miranda Divine: FBI Hero Punished For Protesting the Brutal Tactics Being Used Against People for the Crime of Being Conservative

Some ham-and-eggers are stepping up-- and the FBI is punishing them.

One big part in the below article that I haven't quoted concerns his attempts to have his complaints heard. If you're reporting misconduct in the federal government, your superiors are supposed to work with you, and if they can't, they're supposed to direct you to their superiors, and then ultimately to an inspector general.

The FBI ignored all of these rules and just kept telling him to shut up about the 6th and 8th Amendment violations. Every time he would object to something illegal or unethical, they would strongly suggest his job was in peril, asking him things like, "And how long do you expect to be working at the FBI?" or inviting him to do "some soul-searching" about how much he really wanted to be at the FBI.

Or telling him he was "a bad teammate."

Obviously, when an employee comes to you telling you that he has seen illegalities, you're not supposed to say "Shut up or you'll be fired and lose your pension."

But that's exactly what happened to Steve Friend.

And now he's out of work.

Bombshell allegations by FBI Special Agent Steve Friend contained in a whistleblower complaint filed late Wednesday with the Department of Justice inspector general reveal a politicized Washington, DC, FBI field office cooking the books to exaggerate the threat of domestic terrorism, and using an "overzealous" January 6 ­investigation to harass conservative Americans and violate their constitutional rights.

Friend, 37, a respected 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member, was suspended Monday, stripped of his gun and badge, and escorted out of the FBI field office in Daytona Beach, Fla., after complaining to his supervisors about the violations.

He was declared absent without leave last month for refusing to participate in SWAT raids that he believed violated FBI policy and were a use of excessive force against Jan. 6 subjects accused of misdemeanor offenses.

This American hero, the father of two small children, has blown up his "dream career" because he could not live with his conscience if he continued to be part of what he sees as the unjust persecution of conservative Americans.

"I have an oath to uphold the Constitution," he told supervisors when he asserted his conscientious objection to joining an Aug. 24 raid on a J6 subject in the Jacksonville, Fla., area. "I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector."

Friend, who did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, said he told his immediate boss twice that he believed the raid, and the investigative process leading up to it, violated FBI policy and the subject's right under the Sixth Amendment to a fair trial and Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.

Friend was taken off child exploitation cases to work the January 6th raids. He was told that child pornography was no longer a high priority at the FBI. The Insurrectionists were the real threat.

He repeatedly objected to using armed raids against citizens guilty of, if anything, minor misdemeanors. He pointed out that simple phone calls inviting them to come to the FBI office to answer questions would suffice.

But no, the FBI wanted to scare and intimidate families, so they sent men armed with M-16s to pound on doors.

And they insisted on sending Steve Friend, even though he repeatedly told them he wanted to be considered a conscientious objector and not go on these terror raids.

Among Friend's allegations:

The Washington, DC, field office is "manipulating" FBI case management protocol and farming out J6 cases to field offices across the country to create the false impression that right-wing domestic violence is a widespread national problem that goes far beyond the "black swan" event of Jan. 6, 2021.

As a result, he was listed as lead agent in cases he had not investigated and which his supervisor had not signed off on, in violation of FBI policy.

FBI domestic terrorism cases are being opened on innocent American citizens who were nowhere near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, based on anonymous tips to an FBI hotline or from Facebook spying on their messages. These tips are turned into investigative tools called "guardians," after the FBI software that collates them.

The FBI has post-facto designated a grassy area outside the Capitol as a restricted zone, when it was not restricted on Jan. 6, 2021, in order to widen the net of prosecutions.

The FBI intends to prosecute everyone even peripherally associated with J6 and another wave of J6 subjects are about to be referred to the FBI's Daytona Beach resident agency "for investigation and arrest."

In Today's FBI, complaining about unethical Gestapo tactics gets you punished by your bosses:

In a Sept. 16 letter from the head of FBI human resources, he was told he was losing his security clearance also because he "espoused beliefs which demonstrate questionable judgment [and demonstrated] an unwillingness to comply with rules and regulations."

In his whistleblower complaint, Friend describes "reprisals" from his supervisors after he voiced his conscientious objections.

...

Federico [his superior] told him it would have been better to just "call in sick" rather than voice his objection and "threatened reprisal indirectly by asking how long I saw myself continuing to work for the FBI."

Four days later, Friend was summoned to Jacksonville to meet his next-level bosses, Assistant Special Agents in Charge Coult Markovsky and Sean Ryan, about his refusal to join the SWAT raid.

He told them about his concerns over "irregular" case handling of J6 matters that he believed were in violation of a legal rule known as "Brady" that requires prosecutors to disclose evidence that would exonerate a defendant.

They asked if he believed any J6 rioters committed crimes and he replied: "Some of the people who entered the Capitol committed crimes, but others were innocent. I elaborated that I believed some innocent individuals had been unjustly prosecuted, convicted and sentenced."

Markovsky then asked Friend if J6 rioters who "killed police officers" should be prosecuted, even though no such thing happened. When Friend pointed out that "there were no police officers killed on January 6, 2021," Markovsky told him he was being a "bad teammate."

Cops and prosecutors are indeed required to turn over exculpatory evidence to defendants. But crooked cops and prosecutors will often claim that exculpatory evidence isn't exculpatory, from a certain point of view, and hide it.

It's unethical.

It also happens every day, because there are a lot of crooked cops and prosecutors.

And you can't get rid of them, because when someone in the system like Steve Friend notes this crime, he's told he's "a bad teammate" and should find a different line of work.

Both agents "threatened reprisal again by warning that my refusal [to go on the SWAT raid] could amount to insubordination. References were made to my future career prospects with the FBI."

Friend was labeled AWOL the day the raid took place and stripped of his pay.

This is amazing. This is the real FBI.

A week later, he was told to meet the top agent in Jacksonville, Special Agent in Charge Sherri Onks, who told him he needed to do some "soul searching" and decide if he wanted to work for the FBI.

When he told her "many of my colleagues expressed similar concerns to me but had not vocalized their objections to FBI executive management," she told him his "views represented an extremely small minority of the FBI workforce."

She then shared the emotional experience of fearing for her own life on Jan. 6, 2021, when she was sitting on the seventh floor of the secure J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI headquarters, after protesters one mile away "seized the Capitol and threatened the United States' democracy."

Special Karen In Charge Sherri Onks

I remember her from a Zoom video. When a Congressman asked her a question, I think about how many FBI agents and informants were at the J6 rally, she refused to answer.

Read the whole thing. It's an amazing scoop by Miranda Divine.

At Just the News, Jim Jordan explains what Friend means about the "case file manipulation."

Apparently he means that all of this "domestic violent extremism activity" is just phone calls and emails in preparation for the January 6th Stop the Steal rally. But they're assigning the cases outside of the DC Office, to local offices, to give the appearance that there are all these "domestic violent extremism" cases popping up all over the country.

No, it's all just the same bullshit case. They're assigning the cases to local offices so that they can put little "Domestic Violent Extremism" pins on a map of the US and show DANGEROUS RIGHT-WING PLOTS everywhere.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that the "manipulative case-file practice" was being conducted by the bureau's Washington field office, which was instructing local FBI offices to open up cases on their books that were in fact simply related to the Capitol breach.

"The FBI's case categorization creates the illusion that threats from DVE are present in jurisdictions across the nation, when in reality they all stem from the same related investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6," Jordan wrote.

"Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to 'significant' increases in DVE threats nationwide," he added.

Dan Bongino's interview with FBI agent Kyle Seraphin is up. In the below clip, he says two FBI agents have been suspended without pay -- I assume for coming on the second year now -- for merely attending the Trump January 6th rally.

They did nothing illegal.

The FBI just doesn't like Republicans who support Trump. They've decided that's against FBI policy and borderline treason.

86 I don't think I have anything to add that I didn't already put in the Morning Report:

Friend says his concerns are shared with large numbers of rank-and-file FBI agents across the country who believe they are being used as pawns to pursue the political agenda of the bosses... These kinds of abuses .. are a "morale killer" for field agents ...

They are being used as pawns and, per this statement, they know that this is the case. This means they are no longer innocent. They're being used in the service of tyranny, and they are knowingly complying with it. They were not drafted. There was no FBI recruitment press-gang going around and forcing men out of their homes and restaurants and bars and other businesses and into the Bureau. They are there by choice, they now know the score, they know what's being done, they know that *they* are the ones doing it as they follow the orders of even rottener men above them - yet they continue doing it.

Their *morale* is low? Have they considered why? Is it possibly because they're rotters and they know it and they continue doing it because however many pieces of silver they get for doing it is otherwise satisfactory?
Posted by: Joe Mannix (Not a cop!)

Miranda Divine: FBI Hero Punished For Protesting the Brutal Tactics Being Used Against People for the Crime of Being Conservative&bodytext= Some ham-and-eggers are stepping up-- and the FBI is punishing them. One big part in the below article that I haven't quoted concerns his attempts to have his complaints heard. If you're reporting misconduct in the federal government, your...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 03:46 PM

| Access Comments