Whistleblowers describe a culture of corruption at FBI field offices: ‘Completely out of control’

FBI whistleblowers accused bureau management in different field offices of corruption, cover-ups and retaliation against rank-and-file agents who attempted to expose it, The Washington Times has learned.

Current and former FBI leaders at the bureau’s offices in Miami, Salt Lake City, Buffalo, New York, and Newark, New Jersey, are facing whistleblower complaints that the supervisors:

• Forced or coerced agents to sign false affidavits;

• Fabricated terrorism cases to pump up performance stats;

• Sexually harassed and stalked a female agent;

• Engaged in sex acts with a subordinate in a government vehicle and crashed the vehicle.

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One of the whistleblowers, an FBI agent who claims her allegations of sexual harassment were ignored by superiors including FBI Director Christopher Wray, said the bureau suffers from a “mob-like mentality.”

“The FBI is completely out of control and its culture and structure needs to change. Not only is the political bias completely out of control and disgustingly obvious, the FBI knows they will not be held accountable for their illegal behavior and misconduct,” she said in a letter to Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

The Times reviewed some of the complaints and learned details of other complaints from the whistleblowers or their lawyer.

The complaints were turned over to the House Judiciary Republicans and likely will be part of a broader examination of Justice Department conduct, according to the whistleblowers’ lawyer.

The misconduct charges only add to the mounting mistrust of the DOJ and FBI after the Aug. 8 raid on former President Donald Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, the first-ever FBI raid on a former president’s home.

Another whistleblower, a former employee who worked for the FBI office in Buffalo, told The Times that FBI honchos in Washington mainly focus on the volume of cases to evaluate the special agent in charge or SAC who runs a field office. That leads to some office supervisors inflating the numbers.

“It’s basically a report card for him, so at the end of his two-year term as a SAC, he gets moved to a better position down in Washington. And everything focuses around his metrics,” the employee said.

“You have to have so many terrorism cases per year in your office, or else you fail,” he said. “So they would come to us and say things like, ‘Open up a case. I don’t care if it’s got merit or not. Just open it up. We only have nine, and we need 10 for me to pass.’”

This problem is not exclusive to the Buffalo office but is found in FBI field offices all over the country, said Kurt Siuzdak, a former FBI agent and former whistleblower who now serves as a legal counsel for FBI employees who call out corruption at the bureau.

“Every Thanksgiving and Christmas there’s a number of field offices, and the SAC picks somebody for everybody to follow because it helps them with their metrics,” Mr. Siuzdak said. “So, they pick somebody to scrutinize, often without merit from wherever and that’s the bad guy you need to follow and put your assets on.”

According to Mr. Siuzdak, different field offices have different names for these holiday operations such as “Turkey Day Terrorist” or “Thanksgiving Day Terrorist.”

What’s more, Mr. Siuzdak has multiple clients in the FBI who allege that agents in Salt Lake City were coerced to sign a false affidavit, sworn written statements used as evidence in court.

According to the agents’ complaint, Mr. Siuzdak said, the affidavit did not accurately describe the facts and gave the wrong impression of the evidence. 

“If your affidavit kind of mischaracterizes something … agents shouldn’t be pressured to sign,” Mr. Siuzdak said. “They should be pressured to sign correct and truthful affidavits.”

Another former agent revealed that a SAC at the Miami field office allegedly engaged in an adulterous affair with an intelligence analyst who was married to another man from a different government agency.  

According to the agent’s complaint, the SAC and the intelligence analyst “took an amorous drive” to celebrate his promotion and crashed while engaged in a sex act.

The complaint said the SAC was still promoted. Following an internal investigation, his punishment, by his request, was to be demoted back to SAC of the Miami field office.

The new complaints add to a torrent of recent FBI whistleblowers whose allegations range from trumped-up domestic terrorism cases to FBI leaders inaccurately labeling verified evidence against Hunter Biden as disinformation.