A new whistleblower from the FBI

A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent says his supervisor told him to stop investigating Rudy Giuliani and to cut off contact with any sources who reported on corruption by associates of former President Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower complaint obtained by Insider.

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The whistleblower told Insider that he was finally ordered to stop investigating Giuliani and the rest of the Trump White House in August 2022, after months of what he says were persistent efforts to frustrate his work, at a meeting with three FBI supervisors at a bureau field office. Insider was able to confirm the agent's account of the meeting with a second source with knowledge of what took place.

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The agent, who served 14 years as a special agent for the bureau, including a long stint in Russia-focussed counter-intelligence, claims in a 22-page statement that his bosses interfered with his work in "a highly suspicious suppression of investigations and intelligence-gathering" aimed at protecting "certain politically active figures and possibly also FBI agents" who were connected to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.

Those figures, the statement claims, explicitly included "anyone in the [Trump] White House and any former or current associates of President Trump."

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He said his work had been recognised with eight consecutive years of "excellent" or "outstanding" performance appraisal reports running from 2010 to 2018, and he had been tapped to help verify information obtained by investigators working for Robert Mueller during his time as special counsel.

But in the August 2022 meeting, he was called onto the carpet to discuss "performance issues and concerns" and given suggestions for how to improve, according to the agent's account provided to lawmakers. The directions he received included a strict prohibition on filing intelligence reports relating to Giuliani or any other Trump associate.

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The statement, which was prepared for staffers of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was apparently leaked and posted in mid-July to a Substack newsletter. Insider has independently obtained a copy of the complaint and verified its authenticity, but has not corroborated all of its claims.

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The whistleblower [...] blames "a group of people surrounding [Giuliani] with existing or historical ties to the bureau" for a pattern of "retaliatory action." The statement points to Charles McGonigal, the now-indicted former head of FBI counterintelligence in New York, as one possible source of the apparent "suppressive efforts."

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Months before the agent was told to stop looking at Giuliani and the rest of Trump's circle, he met with the same high-ranking supervisor to pass on information he had received from his confidential sources about Hunter Biden and his ties to Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that had paid Hunter Biden $83,333 a month to sit on its board. "My supervisors were delighted that I had collected this information about Burisma," the agent wrote in his statement.

But when the agent tried to talk about what their sources had to say about Giuliani, his boss's reaction was very different. The supervisor "forcefully interrupted me and ended my presentation," he wrote.

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In the interview with Insider, the new whistleblower said that he had approached the GOP subcommittee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan. But when the subcommittee's staff learned from the whistleblower that the Hunter Biden information had been handled appropriately, their interest dwindled, the whistleblower said.

"The FBI made a diligent attempt to run the Biden material to the ground," the whistleblower said. "It wasn't slow-played. Chairman Jordan should not be using this as an example to show that the FBI is biased against the right."

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Insider is withholding the name of the whistleblower because he has made claims about retaliation from the FBI, where he remains an employee, and because he is in the process of seeking whistleblower protections from Congress.

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"There are people in the FBI who are biased," he said. "We aren't robots. But the bureau itself has integrity. It's necessary. Despite the scars that I bear, I believe that the majority of my colleagues are doing the right thing."

  Business Insider