Twelve retired senior FBI agents, with roughly three decades of individual service in the bureau, told The Daily Wire that entrenched partisan politics have set the federal agency on a path headed toward destruction.
Aside from the top two floors of the FBI headquarters — where, as one former agent said, all the “self-served and greedy bureaucrats” congregate inside the J. Edgar Hoover Building — a thin blue line of agents joined the bureau to protect families, businesses, and the United States.
But a dozen recently retired agents, who requested anonymity and pleaded for America to hear their voices about the alleged weaponization of the FBI, said they witnessed low morale among current agents, partly due to Americans distrusting the bureau. Recent polls support that assessment, showing roughly half of Americans — specifically Republicans or political independents — were losing trust in the 114-year-old federal institution.
“I am writing to share what we think of the weaponization of FBI,” a former agent speaking on behalf of the dozen retirees told The Daily Wire. “What I am saying not only represents my attitudes, but also, to a larger extent, the viewpoints of the other 11 guys and dozens of current agents. We agree privately and uniformly that the FBI is heading in the wrong direction and has been too entrenched with partisan politics, starting from Director [James] Comey and intensified under Director Christopher Wray.”
The antipathy from former and current agents has grown in recent years after a number of controversies have been exposed within the FBI.
The federal agency faced heavy criticism following numerous investigations with questionable motives since 2015 when former director Comey injected himself into the 2016 presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
In the years that followed, Americans watched the national law enforcement agents allegedly involve themselves in political protests from George Floyd demonstrations to January 6, inflate domestic violent extremism statistics, and direct big tech companies via the Twitter Files to censor Americans.
Earlier this year, traditional Catholics in rural Northern Virginia discovered federal agents from the FBI’s Richmond Office were targeting them after an unclassified intelligence document leaked, which relied on ideologically-driven criteria from Left-wing sources like the Southern Poverty Law Center.
FBI Headquarters claimed the bureau purged the document from its system after the memo made national headlines.
In 2022, the Department of Justice coordinated with the White House and the National School Boards Association last year to vilify parents as “domestic terrorists” for objecting to the teaching of radical gender and race theories.
And over the summer federal agents conducted a historic raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida while suppressing key details related to the Hunter Biden probe as “disinformation.”
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe under the Trump administration lashed out at FBI Director Wray after the raid on Trump’s home. Ratcliffe said Wray could be the bureau’s last top official after admitting that the agency fraudulently obtained multiple warrants to illegally spy on Trump as a candidate and during presidency.
“If yet another FBI warrant to raid Trump’s home doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” Ratcliffe said. “Wray may be the last FBI Director.”
The anonymous agents shared exclusive email threads to The Daily Wire, including stories about why three former agents left the FBI who alleged bureaucracy killed the bureau.
“The FBI is not full of corruption, but it is full of bureaucracy, which can be nearly as damaging or worse to the mission,” one email noted. “This is because we all agree corruption is evil and must be rooted out, yet bureaucracy is subtle.”
“Bureaucracy quietly strangles motivation,” the agent continued. “It slowly puts the brakes on innovation. It kills hopeful idealism. We must fight the infamous bureaucratic phrases of ‘it’s just too big to change,’ ‘Nothing can be done about it,’ ‘or ‘That is just the way it is.'”
Another former agent said the bureau became a politicized and weaponized arm of the “woke” Left-wing in Washington D.C. after “political hack lawyers from across the street,” beginning with former Director Robert Mueller, centralized the organization akin to the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency.
“It was the beginning of the end,” one agent said in an email exchange.
After several whistleblowers came forward, like former special agent Kyle Seraphin from the Washington Field Office, who sounded the alarm about questionable activity inside the bureau, the former colleagues-turned-friends said they sympathized with those who were sidelined, suspended, and forced to resign.
“We identified with Nicole Parker’s claim that ‘The FBI became politically weaponized, starting from the top in Washington trickling down to the field offices,” the agent said.
Parker, who served as a special agent in the Miami Field Office from 2011 until resigning in October 2022, wrote a Fox News op-ed in January 2023, claiming the bureau’s trajectory, priorities, and governing principles transformed during her 12-plus years of service.
Other issues causing agents to grow weary of the bureau include top officials lowering the eligibility requirements for recruitment. Parker said it has destroyed credibility, causing Americans to lose faith in the agency and “highly ethical” agents to carry the weight for some cases.
The former agents also named three other whistleblowers they hailed for their “courage, bravery, and integrity” who have all previously spoken to Republican lawmakers on the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
Those agents include former special agent for the FBI’s Daytona Beach Resident Agency Steve Friend, retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst from the FBI’s Boston Field Office George Hill, suspended FBI Special Agent from the Wichita Resident Agency in Kansas Garret O’Boyle.
House Democrats denied referring to Friend, Hill, and O’Boyle as whistleblowers, saying in a report they pushed “conspiracy theories” without presenting evidence of wrongdoing at the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The dozen retired agents said they were “slandered and smeared by the liberal media and woke left Democrats.”
“Whistleblowers should be treated with the utmost regard and respect,” the agent said. “Not everyone has the guts to blow the whistle when witnessing abuses and misconduct in the FBI. Those who do deserve to be protected, not punished.”
Claiming the bureau no longer functioning as an “apolitical agency,” the agents urged more FBI personnel to come forward and uncover the extent of the alleged weaponization within the federal government.
“It’s time to clean house, restore public trust and start over,” the agent said. “Change only happens when we fight for it. I believe deeply that we need a reformed FBI. To address and fix the problems, we should first identify the problems.”
The FBI denied the accusation of making politically motivated decisions in a statement to The Daily Wire.
“The FBI is dedicated to protecting the American people from terrorism, violent crime, cyber threats and other dangers,” the bureau said. “Put quite simply: we follow the facts without regard for politics. While outside opinions and criticism often come with the job, we will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, do things by the book, and speak through our work.”