Other FBI whistleblowers also reach settlements
The following first appeared on Sharyl ATTKISSON‘s Free Substack
After much controversy and ado, former FBI special agent Stephen Friend has been reinstated to the FBI, with backpay.
That development as a result of extensive negotiations involving the whistleblower watchdog group Empower Oversight, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) office, and other advocates for Friend.
In 2022, Friend made headlines after he refused to take part in a planned FBI SWAT raid in Florida on a nonviolent January 6 suspect. He stated that the surprise, armed raids being conducted on people who had at most committed misdemeanor trespassing were dangerous, unwarranted, and politically motivated.
He subsequently lost his job.
Since President Trump was elected to a second term, whistleblower advocates have been working to help him and other FBI agents claiming retaliation to get back their jobs or reach suitable settlements. However, the effort was said to have been met with continued resistance from FBI Director Kash Patel, among others.
The turn of events for Friend was announced along with a host of other whistleblower settlements.
Some, like Friend, fought what they saw as FBI overreach involving the January 6 investigations. Three are being reinstated to duty while others who are still employed are being allowed voluntary retirement.
“My family and I are relieved to close the book on an incredibly difficult three years. I want to publicly acknowledge and express my eternal gratitude to my attorneys from Empower Oversight and Senator Chuck Grassley for their resolute support throughout the entire process.
While this reinstatement is a vindication about the retaliation I experienced, the victory will ring hollow if the FBI engages in similar retribution against future whistleblowers. I pray we see the necessary changes to ensure justice for anyone willing to come forward with reasonable concerns about the agency.
Most importantly, I have to express my eternal gratitude to my family. I could not have endured this ordeal without their love and support.
‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.’ -Genesis 50:20”
Stephen Friend, FBI Special Agent
I profiled Friend’s case in 2022 on an episode of my TV news program “Full Measure.” You can read the transcript and watch the video below.
Friend also took part in my investigation of the undisclosed use of confidential informants and undercovers in the crowd during the swarming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. You can also read that transcript and watch the videos below. Read on for details.
Above: FBI Special Agent Stephen Friend
2022 Full Measure video and transcript:
The FBI has been mired in controversy. An FBI lawyer — caught doctoring documents to spy on a Donald Trump campaign supporter. Former FBI Director James Comey — given a pass after being referred for criminal charges. He’d allegedly mishandled documents in a campaign to smear Trump. The FBI misdirecting the public on the Hunter Biden laptop just before the election. And, of course, the FBI’s Russia collusion probe of Trump, ginned up by the Clinton campaign. All this time we’ve heard little to nothing publicly from FBI insiders. Until now.
Today we begin with a remarkable interview with a current FBI agent: Stephen Friend. He claims that things are so broken at high levels inside the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency that he had to blow the whistle.
Stephen Friend started his career as an FBI Special Agent in 2014. That’s Friend with FBI Director James Comey at graduation. He says his job was without controversy until he began questioning some of the FBI’s motives and practices.
It began with the political kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, putting the focus on domestic terrorism weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
Stephen Friend: The FBI Detroit office opened an investigation on individuals that said they were part of a militia that was intending on kidnapping and assassinating Gretchen Whitmer. We were one of the tactical teams that assisted with the takedowns there. So we executed that warrant and drove away. I thought that I had done good work that day.
Now in the intervening time, there’s a lot that came out with the trials of those individuals. What came out was that the FBI was driving the kidnapping plot through multiple informants and undercover agents. They included the militia group leader, Dan Chappel, an FBI informant who took the lead in plotting Whitmer’s kidnapping and offered up a credit card to buy bullets and supplies— paid for by the FBI.
Stephen Friend: In the fallout, it appeared that the undercovers and case agents were driving this case and driving this narrative to entrap individuals who were not disposed to commit the crimes. And I frankly felt like I had been used as an apparatchik of a politically-driven agency.
Friend went on to what he thought was a long-term assignment working child exploitation cases under the FBI’s Jacksonville, Florida field office. But just three months into the assignment, he was reassigned to a higher priority: January 6 domestic terrorism cases. January 6 refers to the giant Washington, D.C. rally in 2021 with masses of Trump supporters challenging the election of President Biden.
President Donald Trump: I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
Many protesters were peaceful and were allowed into the Capitol as police stood by. Others became violent. The FBI launched aggressive and expansive investigations. Friend says financial incentives rewarded FBI managers who built lots of cases under the heading of “domestic terrorism.”
Sharyl Attkisson: So is it accurate to say the local FBI offices that brought January 6th cases probably saw financial benefit, at least the individual executives with the FBI in those offices?
Stephen Friend: Yes.
Sharyl Attkisson: Is it accurate to say, as far as you know, there were not bonuses being given for child exploitation cases?
Stephen Friend: As far as I know, there weren’t.
Sharyl Attkisson: As you started reading up and gathering facts, what were some of the thoughts that you had about the January 6th incident and the cases?
Stephen Friend: I had sort of a mixed review. To me, there were some violent actions by individuals that probably warranted a criminal prosecution. But then I also saw other cases where the individual was simply walking into the Capitol building with the permission of Capitol police officers and had told the FBI that very same fact, and, on occasion, there was surveillance video to support it. Kind of seemed to me that it was a waste of our valuable resources to pursue even an interview with that individual if we had them on video not committing any crime and just walking into the Capitol building, which is their right to do as an American citizen.
It’s been widely reported that the FBI had undercover agents in the January 6 crowd, though they won’t say how many.
And with some protesters claiming they were allowed into the Capitol, Friend says it harkens back to the Governor Whitmer plot.
Stephen Friend: With the overlap of the way that those individuals were, or may have been, entrapped, and I saw that some of these individuals with January 6th were being allowed into the Capitol by police officers, there was certainly an element of that that, to me, smelled a little bit like entrapment. And I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. There was that “once, shame on you, twice, shame on me” thinking that I had.
For Friend, things completely unraveled in August. That’s when he says he declined to take part in what he considered unnecessary and heavy-handed FBI raids on multiple January 6 suspects in Florida.
Sharyl Attkisson: What did you think was so wrong about the raids?
Stephen Friend: I felt that there was definitely a harder hand in the way that the arrests and the searches were going to be carried out, regardless of the individuals’ involvement in January 6th. They had been interviewed. There had been an open line of communication between the FBI and those individuals. But there are other mechanisms that I felt were better — if it was using surveillance to arrest an individual when he was outside his home and, you know, identifying him on the way to work and doing an arrest there. That could be warranted.
Sharyl Attkisson: Can you arrange someone to turn themselves in through their attorney?
Stephen Friend: Yes. It’s a process called issuing a summons to somebody and it’s very common, especially in white collar, nonviolent crimes.
For refusing to take part in the raids, Friend says he received an ultimatum, then a suspension, from the FBI’s Jacksonville Special Agent in charge, Sherri Onks.
Sharyl Attkisson: What did she say?
Stephen Friend: She said that it appeared to her that I’d lost faith in the agency and its leadership and that I represented a very fringe belief about the events of January 6th not needing the heavy-handedness that the FBI was treating them. And my belief that there could be potential abuses of power that it was incumbent on me to call out as a matter of my oath of office — she said that that was a very fringe belief and that I needed to do some soul-searching about whether or not I wanted to have a future in the FBI.
The FBI declined our interview request but told Full Measure it “investigates individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and other criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. We are committed to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment activity.”
Friend is still technically employed at the FBI, but suspended without pay, and hoping that putting his job on the line makes a difference.
Shary Attkisson: I don’t think should be lost, that the FBI, our premier law enforcement agency in this country domestically, could be, in your view at least, doing things that are the antithesis of what they’re supposed to be doing.
Stephen Friend: I applied to the FBI because I believe in the mission. I look at my responsibility as I want to combat bullying, and that’s why I became a special agent. If the FBI becomes the bully, that doesn’t change my responsibility. I need to stand up and face that down, even if it means my career. And if the FBI is willing to become a bully, then it’s truly lost.
Sharyl (on-camera): Friend is working with a nonpartisan whistleblower group, Empower Oversight. They’ve helped him submit formal complaints to the Inspector General, Office of Special Counsel, and Capitol Hill.
January 6 Full Measure investigation videos and transcripts:
Part One: https://fullmeasure.news/newest-videos/july-16-2023-cover-story-january-6th#
Originally aired: January 8, 2023
It’s been two years since the infamous January 6th rally for President Trump. The subsequent rioting at the U.S. Capitol has become one of the most-prosecuted events in U.S. history. About 1,000 people have been charged with crimes. One side claims it was an “insurrection,” a bigger threat to America than the 9/11 Islamic extremist terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000. Another side claims Trump supporters have been unfairly targeted. Today, we look at a little-reported facet of the fallout after J-6.
March 4, 2021. Surveillance video shows FBI agents, weapons drawn, surrounding the Texas home of Treniss Evans.
Sharyl: It looked like a dozen agents around your house?
Treniss Evans: Oh, it’s a lot more than that. Yeah, so there was 20-plus agents there. They had snipers, they had vehicles to block off the street. I mean, it was insane.
Sharyl: And your 13-year-old son is out on the front deck with his hands up?
Evans: Yeah.
That’s his son, blue shirt, hands up. Considering the presence of a small army from the FBI, you might think Evans was a vicious criminal — armed and dangerous. In fact, he had no history of violence.
This was his crime. He’s in the yellow hat, climbing through a window to enter the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6.
Evans: People were coming out of the building saying, “The police are letting us in. You can go in, you can just walk around. Everybody’s taking videos, it’s fine.”
In videos, you can hear Evans, as he holds his camera at his chest, and urges fellow protesters to be peaceful. Most were.
Evans (January 6, 2021): Do not harm the police, do not hurt the buildings, do not destroy your own property.
Evans: And I took to the megaphone, “We back the blue, we support the police. Don’t break, don’t damage, don’t harm, don’t steal. This is a peaceful protest.”
Evans says the FBI had paid him a friendly visit just after January 6. He offered his full cooperation. They said they’d be in touch. So he was shocked by the armed raid on his home weeks later.
Evans: I mean, this was all part of the shock and awe they promised everybody. It wasn’t only shock and awe in how they came to your house; it was shock and awe in the charging too, shock and awe across the board.
Evans is one of many who question the overnight, come-from-behind victory for Joe Biden. Tens of thousands attended the massive pro-Trump rally on January 6.
President Donald Trump (January 6, 2021): I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
Evans: I didn’t go there for an insurrection. Where’s my gun? You mean, the most armed populace on the face of the planet came for an insurrection, you know, by percentage, you know, came for an insurrection, and didn’t bring any firearms?
Normally, the public has the right to watch Congress. But with overwhelming masses and fears of violence, the Capitol was made a no-go zone. Crowds pushing past barriers were breaking the law. There’s little dispute over prosecuting violent rioters. The controversy surrounds the FBI’s heavy-handed treatment of some peaceful demonstrators.
Steven Friend is among more than a dozen FBI agents reported to be blowing the whistle on the agency’s alleged political bias. He told me he was suspended after refusing to take part in SWAT raids of nonviolent January 6 suspects.
Sharyl: What did you think was so wrong about the raids?
Stephen Friend: I felt that there was definitely a harder hand in the way that the arrests and the searches were going to be carried out, regardless of the individuals’ involvement in January 6.
January 6 has become one of the most aggressively-prosecuted events in U.S. history, with Trump’s enemies claiming it was an insurrection that threatened democracy.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (July 12, 2022): Donald Trump summoned a mob to Washington, D.C. and ultimately spurred that mob to wage a violent attack on our democracy.
Trump supporters lodge accusations of politically-driven investigations, and some Republicans are asking whether law enforcement may have been driving the January 6 chaos more than investigating it.
Sen. Ted Cruz (January 11, 2022): How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of January 6?
Jill Sanborn, FBI Asst. Director (January 11, 2022): Sir, I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t go into the specifics of sources and methods.
Cruz: Did any FBI agents or FBI informants actively encourage and incite crimes of violence on January 6?
Sanborn: Sir, I can’t answer that.
The FBI’s role has come under increased scrutiny as their agents and informants have been revealed to be working undercover at high levels within the groups they’re investigating.
Take the 2020 domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. According to court filings, there were more FBI agents and informants working undercover in the militia group than there were militia members who were arrested. Even the leader of the group who was driving the scheme was an FBI source.
There were also FBI agents or informants secretly working inside two major groups charged with planning the Capitol breach. A leader of the Proud Boys not present for the riots pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. It turns out the Proud Boys had up to eight FBI-linked people on the inside before the riots. And the number two officer in the Oath Keepers was an FBI informant, according to court records.
Full Measure has reviewed video evidence with more than a dozen current and former FBI Agents and law enforcement officials. They’ve flagged what they see as behavior among both law enforcement and people dressed as protesters that merits further investigation.
We wanted to ask the FBI about all of this, but they wouldn’t agree to an interview. At Congressional hearings, FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly declined to say much about the role of FBI agents and informants on January 6.
Christopher Wray, FBI Director (November 15, 2022): But to the extent that there’s a suggestion, for example, that the FBI’s confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6, that’s categorically false.
Rep. Clay Higgins (November 15, 2022): Did you have confidential human sources dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol on January 6 prior to the doors being opened?
Wray: Again, I have to be very careful.
Higgins: It should be a “no.”
For his part, Treniss Evans says he’s not innocent, but insists he’s not the Most Wanted monster he’s been made out to be.
Evans: I want to own the fact that I broke the law, and I think we should all own the fact that we broke the law, but it’s civil disobedience for 99% of the people there. For 90, you know, 90% of the people that went in that building, it’s like a civil disobedience issue.
After the drama of the FBI raid, Evans ended up pleading guilty to simple misdemeanors: entering and remaining in a restricted building. In November, he was sentenced to 20 days in a minimum-security prison. Forever tarred as an “insurrectionist,” a label that he says is woefully misapplied.
Sharyl (on-camera): The Democrat-led Congressional investigation of January 6 recently recommended criminal charges against former President Trump. A special counsel appointed by President Biden’s attorney general is overseeing two other federal investigations into Trump.
Part Two: https://fullmeasure.news/newest-videos/january-6th-part-2#
We continue our examination of the January 6 protests. We’ve already seen key violent instigators on video allowed behind police lines, consulting with law enforcement, and permitted to take a lead in the crowd where they push past police. We pick up now with some of them leading a group to the fatal scene where a Capitol police lieutenant shoots and kills unarmed protestor Ashli Babbitt.
Now outside the House floor, our analysts note numerous protesters using hand signals.
John Dodson: So, watch his hand.
Stephen Friend: Yeah. He’s identifying somebody.
Dodson: Yeah, he’s picking somebody out in the crowd and pointing to them up there.
Friend: He is signaling somebody. And there’s another fist up right now. So there’s multiple people that are doing the fist.
Some ten minutes after “Earmuff Man” first appeared on the video from behind the police line and blended in with the crowd, he’s the key instigator outside a hallway called the Speaker’s Lobby. Notice the officer doesn’t react or pull away when “Earmuff Man” grabs him by the hand. A police team in riot gear arrives. They’re nearby off-camera, and three officers guarding the Speaker’s Lobby suddenly walk off.
Friend: And immediately they all walk away.
Dodson: I’d love to know why or who gave the order for them to abandon that post. Everything seemed calm. They had it under control. They were holding their line. And then they forfeited, and I don’t know why.
“Earmuff Man” removes his hat and mask and takes the lead, beating on the glass with a helmet as police and a sergeant at arms official watch. The gun of Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd can be seen. He fires, killing an unarmed protester named Ashli Babbitt as she climbs through a broken window.
“Earmuff Man” immediately runs behind the line of police in riot gear who are watching, positioned on a staircase just steps away, and they let him in. Though he was a violent leader just moments before, he can be seen speaking with and touching officers who then allow him to crouch and dig through his backpack as they turn their backs to him.
Friend: Yeah, that’s an emergency response team. So they’re not there to negotiate with you. They’re there to put you on the ground. But they’re letting him back.
Dodson: If you look down there now, so he’s changing his shirt.
Friend: He’s getting things or putting things in his bag.
Sharyl: So in police training, would you ever let a demonstrator after a shooting come behind your line and turn your back on him, dig through his backpack?
Friend: No.
Dodson: No
Friend: No.
Dodson: He’s gonna be controlled. Firstly, if he’s behind the line, it’s because we want him there, and then he’s gonna have somebody with him. He’s gonna have somebody probably on top of him.
Sharyl: If he were a demonstrator?
Dodson: Right, yeah. Literally. If I need to talk to him, hold onto him, and we pass him to the back, then they’re holding onto him very, very securely until it’s over with and we’re done talking to him.
Sharyl: What does this scene say to you?
Dodson: He obviously has free range to do — now I understand it’s a very dynamic situation. There’s a lot going on. But for all these, you know, emergency response team or rapid reaction team to just keep passing him back to no one and allow him to go digging through that bag in the stairwell, it raises a lot of questions.
Sharyl: Tell me about procedure and what you see here?
Friend: He would’ve been passed down the steps and restrained. He might have handcuffs, zip ties on him, if he was somebody that you were passing down the line. If he was a crowd control issue, he’s certainly within lunging distance for these guys. They’re clearly comfortable with him being there. The last guy on the line doesn’t even have his face towards him. He’s got his back towards him.
“Earmuff Man” wasn’t arrested that day. But images of him breaking the glass before Ashli Babbitt was shot were shown on the news and online. Amid the public uproar, he was arrested about a month later. His name: Zachary Alam. His indictment didn’t explain why he took a lead that day, or mention any evidence he’s a Trump supporter.
We asked the Justice Department to help identify and provide context for key instigators seen on camera, but they declined. Lawyers representing Alam didn’t return calls. He now awaits January sentencing on 10 criminal convictions.
A Justice Department press release says Alam had roamed violently around the Capitol on January 6 until he was quote “corralled” in that hallway, where police inexplicably allowed him to join the crowd and become a leader.
More questions are raised by a high-ranking law enforcement source that day. He tells Full Measure that, for the first time he knows of, Capitol police weren’t given the standard intelligence briefing telling which intelligence agencies, officers, and informants would be in the crowd on January 6.
And last month, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testified that, in a deviation from normal practice, undercover officers from other departments were embedded without his knowledge.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) (September 19 Congressional hearing): We actually have evidence and records indicating plainclothes MPD officers were on Capitol grounds on January 6, and you’re saying you weren’t aware that they would have embedded those officers within the crowd? They didn’t make you aware of that?
Steven Sund: No sir, they did not make me aware of it.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has gone on record denying his agency played any improper role.
Christopher Wray/FBI Director (July 12): I will say that this notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hardworking, dedicated men and women.
Sharyl: Is it a rational question to ask, whether those people were working with the federal agencies or with police?
Friend: Yes, it’s absolutely a completely reasonable question. What, could they have been an informant? Perhaps. Could they have been an undercover? You never know. I don’t think that this is a perfect puzzle where all the pieces go together. I do think though, that there were some just blatant behaviors that day that were not normal — they were very unnatural — that necessitate a full, transparent, and open investigation by the individuals that are positioned to do that in government and by individuals such as yourself in media who should have access to that footage so that they can present it to the American people.
Sharyl (on-camera): Democrats in Congress withheld the full Capitol videos. After Republicans won control of the House in 2022, they also withheld the video, but recently established strict processes for who they say can view parts of the video in private and make requests for clips.
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