‘Rotted At Its Core’: House Judiciary GOP Releases Stunning Report On Rampant FBI Criminality and Misconduct

By Staff Members Of The United States House Judiciary Committee

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the stewardship of Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, is broken. The problem lies not with the majority of front-line agents who serve our country, but with the FBI’s politicized bureaucracy. The problem lies, for example, with the FBI hierarchy that spied on President Trump’s campaign and ridiculed conservative Americans. The problem lies with FBI bureaucrats who altered and mischaracterized evidence to federal courts, circumvented safeguards, and exploited weaknesses in policies governing investigations and informants to target politically disfavored subjects and to protect favored ones.

The problem lies with the FBI structure that centralizes high-profile cases in D.C., in the hands of politicized actors with politicized incentives. Quite simply, the problem—the rot within the FBI—festers in and proceeds from Washington.

Over the last year, a multitude of whistleblowers have approached Judiciary Committee Republicans with allegations of political bias by the FBI’s senior leadership and misuses of the agency’s federal law-enforcement powers. These whistleblowers have risked their careers out of fidelity to principle and a commitment to restoring public trust in the FBI. This report begins to tell their stories. Even at this early stage, one startling conclusion is clear: the FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, have become political institutions.

This report details the problems, as recounted in whistleblower disclosures and other forms, that undermine the FBI’s fundamental law-enforcement mission. Whistleblowers describe the FBI’s Washington hierarchy as “rotted at its core,” maintaining a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” and full of “rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse.”

Whistleblowers describe how the FBI has abused its law-enforcement authorities for political purposes, and how actions by FBI leadership show a political bias against conservatives. For example:

• The FBI is artificially inflating statistics about domestic violent extremism in the nation. Whistleblowers have described how FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria. They also explained how the FBI is misrepresenting the scale of domestic violent extremism nationwide by categorizing January 6th-related investigations as organic cases stemming from local field offices, instead of all related to one single incident. In both ways, the FBI is fueling the Biden Administration’s narrative that domestic violent extremism is the biggest threat to our nation.

• The FBI is abusing its counterterrorism authorities to investigate parents who spoke at school board meetings. Whistleblowers disclosed how, shortly after the National School Boards Association urged President Biden to use the Patriot Act against American parents, the FBI Counterterrorism Division set up a special “threat tag” to track school board-related cases. Whistleblowers provided evidence of how the FBI opened investigations into one mom for allegedly telling a local school board “we are coming for you” and a dad simply because he “rails against the government” and “has a lot of guns.”

• The FBI has abused its foreign intelligence authorities to spy on American citizens, including people associated with the campaign of President Trump in 2016. These facts have been documented in Inspector General reports and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions, but there is little indication the FBI has changed—or is willing to change—course.

• The FBI is clearing the Bureau of employees who dissent from its woke, leftist agenda. The FBI is actively seeking to “purge” FBI employees holding conservative views—or, in President Biden’s view, those who are a “threat to American democracy” — because they hold conservative views. The FBI has even taken retaliatory actions against at least one whistleblower who has spoken out.

• Whistleblowers have explained how the FBI’s “political meddling” “is dragging the criminal side [of the Bureau] down” as resources are “pulled away” from real lawenforcement duties. As a prime example, one whistleblower described how he was “told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies” so that he could work a Washingtondirected politically charged case instead. Such a mis-prioritization is not only a dereliction of duty, but it is a grave disservice to the victims of crimes that do not advance the FBI’s political agenda.

The examples outlined in this report concern FBI abuses and misconduct primarily, due to the experiences of the whistleblowers and the conduct to which they are exposed. But because the FBI is a component of the Justice Department, it is virtually impossible to examine the FBI’s actions without also examining those of the Justice Department. For example, in creating a threat tag to track investigations into concerned parents, the FBI was executing on a directive from Attorney General Garland and the Justice Department. In addition, the recent examples of misconduct must properly be examined in the context of years of serious abuses from the FBI and Justice Department. As such, where necessary for context and explanation, this report includes a discussion of misconduct and abuses apparent in the Justice Department in addition to the FBI.

The FBI has a troubling history of using its authorities to advance political goals. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau surveilled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., engaging in “an intense campaign” to discredit the civil rights leader.

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller sought to change the FBI’s “culture” to produce a “centraliz[ed]” and “intelligence driven” organization.3 With its new centralized structure, FBI leadership began running investigations out of headquarters rather than the originating field offices—something that had been standard practice for nearly a century.4 Mueller started the trend of filling leadership positions with Washington bureaucrats “who lacked the institutional 1 Remarks, The White House, Remarks by President Biden on the Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation (Sept. 1, 2022).

From information provided by whistleblowers, these cultural and structural problems continue to this day.

Director Wray began at the FBI in the wake of James Comey’s disastrous tenure, when the Bureau’s Washington leadership used the power of federal law enforcement to attack President Donald Trump and his campaign. Wray had an opportunity to clean up the leadership culture at the FBI, to end the politicization, and to restore trust and integrity in the FBI’s mission. By any objective measure, Wray has failed.

Americans deserve to have confidence that the enormous power and reach of federal law enforcement will be used fairly and free of any indication of politicization. The FBI has the power, quite literally, to ruin a person’s life—to invade their residence, to take their property, and even to deprive them of their liberty. The potential abuse of this power, or even the appearance of abuse, erodes the fundamental principle of equality under the law and confidence in the rule of law. The FBI’s tremendous power is precisely why the people’s elected representatives in Congress must conduct vigorous oversight, particularly in light of allegations of abuse and misconduct made to date. This issue transcends partisan politics, and the information contained in this report should concern all policymakers.

This report presents what is known so far about the extent of problems festering within the FBI’s Washington bureaucracy. There is likely much more to be uncovered in the months ahead. But from what is known, it is clear the FBI needs repair. Too many whistleblowers have said that they are “saddened” by what they see happening at the Bureau. Too much is at stake to sacrifice the trust and accountability in our federal law-enforcement apparatus. The necessary first step in fixing the FBI’s broken culture and out-of-control hierarchy is to identify and understand the problem. This report begins to do just that.

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