Republican House Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) calls for 16 FBI whistleblowers to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. This report comes from a letter sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray last week.
Breitbart News reports Jordan, who chairs the Weaponization of the Federal Government Select Subcommittee, has conducted closed-door interviews with three FBI witnesses who had contacted Jordan’s office regarding alleged misconduct in the bureau. Jordan named 16 individuals who are current or former FBI employees in his letter, as they had been cited in the closed-door interviews. In the letter to Wray, Jordan stated:
Since the beginning of the Biden Administration, the Committee has made multiple requests for information and documents concerning the FBI’s operations. On November 18, 2022, to assist you in preparing to respond to our oversight requests in the 118th Congress, we notified you about the initial set of FBI employees with whom we would seek to speak early this year. We renewed this request in the 118th Congress via letter dated January 17, 2023. To date, the FBI has declined to satisfy these requests.
From the documentary and testimonial information that we have obtained to date, we have identified several FBI employees who we believe possess information that is necessary for our oversight.
Jordan also made it clear he is weary of any legal or regulatory methods of skirting the investigation that Wray or Attorney General Merrick Garland could use. In his letter, Jordan appears to use his legislative authority granted by the Supreme Court to comply with his requests. He states:
The Supreme Court has recognized that Congress has a ‘broad and indispensable’ power to conduct oversight, which ‘encompasses inquiries into the administration of existing laws, studies of proposed laws, and surveys in our social, economic or political system for the purpose of enabling Congress to remedy them.’ Pursuant to the Rules of the House of Representatives, the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to conduct oversight of the FBI to inform such potential legislative reforms. These legislative reforms could include, among other proposals, legislation to modify the FBI’s structure and organization or to change its existing authorities and responsibilities, legislation to enhance civil liberty protections in how the FBI carries out its authorities, legislation to prevent the misuse of federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism tools, and legislation to address the FBI’s interactions with private entities about constitutionally protected activity.
Breitbart reported on the witnesses that Jim Jordan had interviewed so far this year:
The witnesses questioned so far this year include George Hill, a retired national security intelligence supervisor in the FBI’s Boston Field Office; Steve Friend, a former Florida-based FBI special agent; and Garret O’Boyle, a suspended Kansas-based FBI special agent. They were questioned in closed-door transcribed interviews by Republican and Democrat members of the Judiciary Committee, under which the weaponization subcommittee is housed.
According to the interview transcriptions and notes, Hill and Friend testified in detail about how they felt certain leaders at the FBI had an abnormally heavy focus on cases related to the January 6 Capitol riot.
Hill and Friend, among their various allegations, said they worked in an environment where agents were pressured by their superiors to prioritize cases related to “domestic violent extremism” and inflate the number of such cases in the aftermath of the riot.
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