IN-DEPTH: Americans ‘Becoming More Aware of the FBI’s Malfeasance’: FBI Whistleblower

'The FBI was never about protecting the United States Constitution. It has more to do with preserving the status quo and doing the bidding of who was in charge.'

Former FBI Special Agent Stephen Friend at his Daytona Beach home on Oct. 28, 2022. Paulio Shakespeare/The Epoch Times

FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend said more Americans are starting to see that something is very wrong.

“People are becoming more aware of the FBI’s malfeasance,” Mr. Friend said in an interview with The Epoch Times.

Mr. Friend also said, “There’s a strong case to be made that the FBI was never about protecting the United States Constitution, adding that ”a case could also be made that the FBI has always been an extraconstitutional organization,” meaning its actions are not based on or authorized by the United States Constitution.

“It has more to do with preserving the status quo and doing the bidding of who was in charge,” he said.

The most glaring weaponization of the FBI, he said, can be seen in the agency’s relentless pursuit of Americans who participated in the protests on Jan. 6, 2021.

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

As previously reported by The Epoch Times, the U.S. government has spent over two years pursuing everyone it can find who participated in the U.S. Capitol protests on Jan. 6, 2021. More than 1,000 have been arrested. Hundreds have been incarcerated, many without a trial or having been convicted of any crime.

To this day, the FBI is still actively “seeking the public’s assistance in identifying individuals” who were involved in any way with the events of that day, deploying  their “full investigative resources” and working closely with “federal, state, and local partners to aggressively pursue those involved in these criminal activities.”

As previously reported by The Epoch Times, Mr. Friend—a 12-year veteran of the FBI and a SWAT team member—was suspended on Sept. 19, 2022, after complaining to his supervisors about the “overzealous” methods used by the department to “persecute” conservative Americans as part of its still-ongoing investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

He also refused to participate in the excessive force SWAT raids used against Jan. 6 suspects accused of misdemeanor offenses.

After his suspension, 30 former FBI agents voiced public support for Mr. Friend.

The New York Post reported that Ernie Tibaldi, a retired San Francisco agent, praised Mr. Friend “for having the courage to stand up to the corruption that has taken over the leadership of the FBI.”

‘Heavy-Handed’ but ‘Legal’

While “heavy-handed,” John Malcom says the continued efforts of the FBI to hunt down and arrest Jan. 6 participants “are legal.”

John Malcolm, vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government for The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation

As vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government, Mr. Malcom oversees work for The Heritage Foundation to “increase understanding on the Constitution and rule of law.” He is also the director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

“What they’re doing may certainly be unseemly, and many may consider it to be outrageous. But it’s legal,” Mr. Malcom told The Epoch Times, noting that “the statute of limitations is at least five years, and in some cases, longer.”

“It’s certainly strong-arm tactics, and it is certainly unseemly. But it’s legal. If they have felony charges, they are entitled to get arrest warrants. They’re entitled to go and cuff them and bring them in,” he explicated. But he also conceded that many will “come to the conclusion” that the efforts are politically motivated.

“Many people have [come] to that conclusion, and I am not going to disabuse them of that,” he said further, adding that he does believe “there are many things the FBI does that I consider to be abusive, and I will leave it to others to decide what’s abusive or not. It’s a very, very aggressive approach. These people may have violated the law, but I am suspecting that anybody who actually did anything violent that day has already been arrested and charged. It’s a very heavy-handed approach to law enforcement, but it is lawful. Any time the FBI does anything that is this heavy-handed leads to a legitimate inquiry about whether this was done for show or purely for political purposes.”

Justifying the Budget

Joseph McBride agrees with Mr. Malcom’s assessment that those who were involved in more violent activities on Jan. 6 “have already been arrested.”

Joseph McBride—an attorney who is representing several Jan. 6 defendants—agrees with Mr. Malcom’s assessment that those who were involved in more violent activities on Jan. 6 “have already been arrested.” He also suggested that the bureau’s continued effort to hunt down more Jan 6 participants is an effort to justify their request for more money, even as arrest rates have dropped significantly.

NBC reported that “the pace of arrests has slowed dramatically, even as federal prosecutors have just three years left until the statute of limitations runs out on most Jan. 6 offenses.”

“They had to justify their budget,” Mr. McBride told The Epoch Times. “They had a massive increase in terms of their annual budget, and they have to justify the numbers. January 6 is easy pickings,” he said. “They’re easy convictions. The more convictions they have the money they can ask for. They’re trying to justify the rise in funding for their police state.”

Tucked into the Democrat’s 4,155-page $1.7 trillion government funding bill (pdf) for fiscal year 2023 is an allocation for more money to help the DOJ prosecute Jan. 6 cases.

As shown in the summary (pdf) by the House Appropriations Committee, the government dedicated an additional $11.33 billion—“an increase of $569.6 million above the fiscal year 2022” and “$524 million above the President’s budget request”—to fund government “efforts to investigate extremist violence and domestic terrorism.”

Another $2.63 billion was allocated to the U.S. attorneys who are prosecuting Jan. 6 defendants and prisoners, an increase of $212.1 million above fiscal year 2022.

According to the DOJ, their budget request for the FBI for fiscal year 2023 was $10,803.6 million. That covers 36,945 positions, 251 attorneys, and 13,616 agents. The budget for fiscal year 2022 was $10,275.8 million, covering 36,149 positions, 244 attorneys and 13,414 agents. That’s an increase of $527.8 million for an additional 796 positions, seven more attorneys, and another 202 agents.

Expansion of Conservative Targets

According to Mr. Friend, the Department of Justice is slowly expanding its range of conservative targets.

In October 2020, the Department of Homeland Security released its first annual homeland threat assessment (pdf), in which Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf declared he was “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years.”

During their testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee Hearing on domestic terrorism in the aftermath of the protests on Jan. 6, 2021, both Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said white supremacist groups pose the most serious threat to domestic national security in the U.S. 

During a May 18 hearing by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified (pdf) that “The FBI is not in the business of investigating or policing speech at school board meetings, or anywhere else for that matter, and we’re not gonna start now.”

Patti Hidalgo Menders speaks out against board actions during a Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting in Ashburn, Virginia, on Oct. 12, 2021. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

In a July 12 post on X, Mr. Friend disputed Wray’s testimony, saying, “He lied. The Joint Terrorism Task Force in my office did it. I testified about the details in May.”

As Mr. Friend said, “Now you have the push from the Biden administration against anti-government extremism and white supremacy.”

“Not surprisingly,” he added, “Biden identified Republicans as anti-government extremists and white supremacists.”

On May 13, Mr. Biden urged Americans to “stand up against the poison of white supremacy” and declared that “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.

Mr. Friend said the same bias is seen in how the FBI chooses to conduct raids.

Conservatives involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 protests, even those charged with misdemeanors, had their homes surrounded by dozens of FBI agents and fully armed SWAT teams during terrifying early morning raids.

However, when Black Lives Matter rioters burned and looted entire business districts in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Vice President Kamala Harris not only praised their activities as “essential” and “brilliant, she promoted a bail fund that helped free six men accused of domestic violence and another man who was charged with two counts of second-degree murder.

With a broken window in the background, FBI agents process the home of Craig Robertson in Provo, Utah, on Aug. 9, 2023. George Frey/Getty Images

More recently, the FBI shot and killed 75-year-old Craig Robertson in Provo, Utah, after he allegedly made online threats against Mr. Biden.

The Guardian reported that while federal law enforcement described Mr. Robertson as a “willful true threat to kill or cause injury to President Biden,” neighbors described him as a disabled, elderly man who walked with a cane and liked to bluster on social media.

Mr. Friend suspects this trend has a purpose.

“While the FBI should pride itself on using the least amount of force necessary and to be a critically thinking agency to bring someone into custody, the default now is to send in a heavier force through sock and awe, which was especially the case in all of these January 6 cases. I can only deduce that it’s because the FBI wants to send a message.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the FBI for comment.

Gary Bai, Janice Hisle, Jackson Richman, Joseph Lord, and Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.