FBI Whistleblower Testimony Should Pave Way for More Investigations, Former Agent Says

Suspended FBI special agent Garret O’Boyle, former FBI special agent Steve Friend, and suspended FBI analyst Marcus Allen testify during a hearing before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of the House Judiciary Committee on May 18, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Information provided by three FBI whistleblowers to a U.S. House subcommittee in May weighs in favor of further investigation and testimony from more current and former agents, says whistleblower Stephen Friend.

Friend said that while he, Garret O’Boyle, and Marcus Allen took hits from Democrats on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, their performance should pave the way for testimony from other federal law enforcement whistleblowers.

“I think the goal for the Democrats was to make the whistleblowers look like they’re out of control, not rational people, unprofessional, and sort of wild,” Friend told The Epoch Times. “And that would then discourage the Republicans from having future hearings with whistleblowers. So we had to lay down on the barbed wire and take the hits.”

The May 18 hearing was punctuated by attempts from Democrats to discredit the men or paint them as partisans. Their patriotism and loyalty were questioned. They were accused of profiting from their testimony and accused of wanting to tear down and defund the police.

Friend said the attacks fell flat and showed the minority party was reduced to throwing mud.

Suspended FBI special agent Garrett O’Boyle (L), former FBI agent Steve Friend, (2L), and suspended FBI analyst Marcus Allen (2R) during a hearing in Washington on May 18, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

“If that hearing had gone poorly, and the witnesses had buckled underneath attacks that we received, I don’t think there would have been as big of an appetite from the committee to have future hearings,” Friend said.

“I was prepared by my attorneys and by the people I work with,” Friend said. “We did sort of these murder boards where they role-play as adversarial interrogators. I felt prepared.”

Friend said committee Democrats tried to twist his public statements about dismantling the FBI into a broadside attack on law enforcement.

“I found [Rep.] Stacey Plaskett’s [(U.S. Virgin Island at-large)] opening statement to be pretty gross when she tried to wrap herself in the flag of Police Week when Democrats have been consistently anti-law enforcement for a number of years,” Friend said.

“And misconstruing my statements that I want to defund the FBI means that I want to defund federal law enforcement or remove federal law enforcement. I want to empower local law enforcement. I think that the number one priority for the FBI should be to empower local law enforcement.”

Friend said he viewed some of the comments during the hearing as questioning the loyalty or patriotism of all three witnesses.

“I served my community as a police officer. I worked on remote Indian reservations and arrested 150-plus violent criminals, was on a SWAT team that went after violent criminals,” Friend said.

Arrested Pornographers, Pedophiles

“I went after child pornographers and pedophiles—people that did unspeakable crimes,” he said. “I will play my patriotism against any member of the Democratic caucus.”

Friend resigned from the FBI in February after being on unpaid suspension for five months. He refused to go on FBI SWAT raids against Jan. 6 defendants in Florida. He told supervisors that the heavy-handed approach being used was unnecessarily risky and could trample on constitutional liberties.

“One of the things they drill into you early on is every encounter that you have with the public is an armed encounter—because you’re armed,” Friend said. “And because of that reality, the goal should always be to be as peaceful as possible.”

Former FBI Special Agent Stephen Friend, shown as a member of the FBI's Omaha SWAT team in late 2020. Photo courtesy of Stephen Friend

Friend has also criticized the Bureau for opening hundreds of Jan. 6 cases in order to create the perception that domestic terrorism is a bigger problem than it is in America.

He said there were efforts with Jan. 6 cases to inflate arrest numbers for political reasons.

“There were phone calls,” Friend said. “I wasn’t on them, but multiple people told me, confirmed for me, phone calls were made. They said we checked to say, ‘Are you going to charge this guy?’ And they said, ‘We don’t know yet. We’re gonna go back to the codebook and see if we can find something to charge.’”

I'll Show You the Crime

That’s not how investigations are supposed to work, Friend said.

“Show me the man, I'll show you the crime. That’s precisely what that is,” Friend said, referring to a paraphrased statement attributed to Joseph Stalin’s ruthless secret police director Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (1899-1953).

“Which is like [saying], ‘We don’t like the fact that you demonstrate the politics we disagree with,’” Friend said, “‘and you didn’t do anything that was discernibly and obviously a crime. But the fact that you were there—we want to get everybody with something.’”

Friend said he is glad information from FBI whistleblowers is getting a wider audience and opening more eyes.

“I’m excited to get to share information with more people,” he said. “I thought it was falling on deaf ears. But there’s a difference between hearing something and refusing to listen and just never having heard it.

“I think there’s just a lot of people who have yet to hear it. There’s a lot more audience out there. And that’s what I’m going to focus on.”