FBI Reform Takes Back Seat at Congressional Hearing to Denunciations of Hunter Biden, Elon Musk

A House Intelligence subcommittee hearing meant to expose the partisanship and politicalization of President Biden’s FBI instead focused largely on the controversies still swirling around Hunter Biden and his notorious laptop and, more recently, Elon Musk and DOGE. Former agents who watched the live stream of the hearing were left wondering whether subcommittee members asked the right questions and if the select group of former agents called in to testify— including a Fox News contributor and a former FBI supervisor — were the right people to answer them.“I don’t think they really got to any root issues or problems. They tapdanced around a lot of different issues. And I don’t think there were any substantial takeaways. There were no action items, there were no revelations on anything,” a former FBI agent, Chris Piehota, told the Sun.“It seems that the opportunities to discuss real reform steps and any discussion of accountability measures were lost in political grandstanding and the exchange of tropes from both sides of the aisle,” added a retired FBI supervisor, John Nantz, who spent 20 years at the bureau.The hearing, titled “Inside the Biden FBI: Waste, Fraud, Abuse, and a Bureau Leadership in Decline,” was intended to dig deep into the culture and conduct of the FBI under the leadership of the former director, Christopher Wray, Attorney General Garland, and President Biden. Republicans contend that the Bureau, when under the umbrella of the Biden Justice Department, focused improperly on partisan investigations of President Trump and also targeted Christians and conservatives for surveillance.“This hearing is more than oversight. This is about restoring trust,” said Representative Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, the subcommittee’s chairman, in his opening remarks. He promised to focus the hearing squarely on Biden’s FBI, which he characterized as a bloated bureaucracy that wasted billions in taxpayer money to hound political foes, silence dissenters, trample on civil liberties, and ignore the nation’s most serious threats.“Let me be clear: the FBI should be a shield for the American people. Instead, under the Biden-Harris administration, it became a sword to use against them,” said Mr. Van Drew. Soon subcommittee members spent much of their opening remarks addressing political issues regarding the Biden and current Trump Administrations. “The FBI knew Hunter Biden’s laptop was real. They knew it. They colluded with Big Tech to frame it as Russian disinformation. They tried to bury the story from the American people. That wasn’t law enforcement. That was raw political election interference,” said Mr. Van Drew. Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, who’s been making headlines for inflammatory comments about conservatives, went after Elon Musk’s “20-something-year-old DOGE bags” for “reckless” budget cuts and Mr. Trump’s new FBI director, Kash Patel, whom she described as a “Didn’t Earn It” hire, for considering contracting UFC fighters as FBI trainers. Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican, whose Judiciary Committee spent the last two years investigating corruption at the Biden FBI, brought up recent controversies like the school board memo, in which the FBI appeared to target parents protesting at local school board meetings about masking requirements or critical race theory; and the surveillance by the FBI of conservative Catholics as if they were violent religious extremists. He also brought up the still-unsolved January 5, 2021 pipe bomb incident, in which a masked individual left pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC offices at Washington, D.C. During Mr. Biden’s time in office, the Justice Department “couldn’t tell us who planted the pipe bombs, who leaked the Dobbs opinion, who put cocaine at the White House,” said Mr. Jordan, referring to a bag of cocaine found in the West Wing in 2023 that Mr. Trump believes belonged to Hunter Biden. Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, highlighted the recent dismissal of criminal charges against Mayor Eric Adams by Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, and derided Mr. Musk’s “bulldozing” of the federal government. These were not the topics that the four witnesses, who were there to testify, were hoping to focus all their time on.The senior director of Federal Affairs with the Foundation for Government Accountability, Stewart L. Whitson, a former supervisory special agent in its intelligence unit who spent nearly a decade at the FBI, assailed the Biden administration for politicizing the bureau “in ways we have never seen” and for Mr. Wray’s tendency to withhold information from the public. “I think towards the end of his tenure, he kind of became a little smug,” he added. Mr. Wray was appointed by Mr. Trump, who quickly soured on him, and, in between his presidencies, became incensed after Mr. Wray authorized the August 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, when agents entered the bedchamber of Melania Trump.Mr. Whitson called for seven changes to fix the bureau and regain trust. These included establishing new criminal penalties for FBI employees who “knowingly” abuse investigative powers, creating an FBI-specific DOGE effort to identify fraud and abuse in the bureau, and ridding the bureau of entrenched bureaucrats.“We’ve already seen this play out in dramatic fashion with the now former FBI leader in New York, who tried to coerce his subordinates to, quote, ‘dig in against the administration,’” said Mr. Whitson, making reference to the former assistant director, James Dennehy, a 23-year FBI veteran and well-respected figure among former and current agents. Mr. Dennehy pushed back on the Department of Justice’s efforts to identify all FBI employees involved in the January 6th investigation through a questionnaire. He was forced into early retirement in March.The director of Reform the Bureau, Richard Stout, a coalition of former and active FBI Special Agents, called for continued decentralization of the bureau’s operations, which he applauded Mr. Patel for pursuing early on in his young tenure. “We at Reform the Bureau believe criminal investigations have been deprioritized over the past few years in favor of those more political in nature. That must end,” said Mr. Stout.Luke William Hunt, an associate professor at the University of Alabama who spent six years as a special agent in the FBI’s Charlottesville and Washington D.C. offices, was concerned that lack of predication, selective enforcement of corruption, and selective enforcement of national security threats could lead to “the erosion of the rule of law” at the FBI. “On one hand, I’ve read reports that the disgusting vandalism and arson directed at Tesla will be prioritized as domestic terrorism. On the other hand, I’ve read reports that the FBI’s new reorganization will move resources away from the investigation and analysis of other domestic terrorism threats. My only point is that we should not prioritize domestic terrorism investigations based on whether they’re motivated by the left or the right,” said Mr. Hunt.A former special agent, Nicole Parker, who spent 12 years in the FBI working on securities fraud and criminal cases, primarily in Miami, choked up upon describing the 2021 murder of special agent Laura Schwartzenberger, her former colleague and close friend, and special agent Daniel Alfin, both of whom were murdered while executing a search warrant on suspect David Huber on a child pornography investigation.Ms. Parker, a Fox News contributor, criticized the Miami field office for having “no SWAT presence” when Ms. Schwatzenberger was murdered.“It is disturbing to me that during the same timeframe, FBI SWAT resources were liberally being dispatched for the arrest of first-time nonviolent January 6 offenses. The widespread use of SWAT appeared to be for political intimidation,” said Ms. Parker. Representative Hank Johnson, a Democrat, focused his line of questioning on Ms. Parker’s job to “create content” for Fox News and billionaire Richard Uihlein’s financial backing of The Foundation for Government Accountability, Mr. Whitson’s employer. Representative Brandon Gill, a Republican, went after the Southern Poverty Law Center for designating “traditional Catholics” like the Family Research Council as a hate groups. “Can you recall, before Joe Biden was in office, anytime whenever the FBI specifically targeted a group solely because of their religious faith?” Mr. Gill asked Mr. Whitson. “No,” he replied. By the end, former agents who watched the proceedings felt that the only waste that was uncovered by the subcommittee was the golden opportunity to give the FBI a roadmap to achieving lasting reform. “There were almost no action items which could help the FBI earn back the trust it once enjoyed. While I support much of what was said, based on the biographies given from those testifying, they were limited in substantive knowledge and experience,” said a retired FBI supervisor, Chris Hinkle, who spent 20 years in the bureau. “The witnesses were given little opportunity to discuss substantive policies which could be enacted to assure the public, and Congress, that appropriate oversight can be accomplished. Overall, a real lost opportunity,” said Mr. Nantz. As for another hearing, there is nothing immediately planned. “(Reform the Bureau) is resolved to working closely with Congress and the new administration on positive reforms that benefit the American people,” said Mr. Stout.

FBI Reform Takes Back Seat at Congressional Hearing to Denunciations of Hunter Biden, Elon Musk

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