According to a protected disclosure submitted by a top FBI official to the Office of the Inspector General, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate advised the agency’s internal critics of its Jan. 6-related cases to look for work elsewhere and offered to personally address their concerns.
According to a protected disclosure submitted by a top FBI official to the Office of the Inspector General, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate advised the agency’s internal critics of its Jan. 6-related cases to look for work elsewhere and offered to personally address their concerns.
The deputy director allegedly addressed internal concerns that the bureau had not approached its investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in the same way it did with the riots and protests connected to the death of George Floyd during a routine meeting in February 2021, according to a sworn affidavit from the FBI special agent with 15 years of experience.
“He had heard that some employees were contrasting the response to January 6th with the response to the post-George Floyd protests and riots in the summer of 2020,” the whistleblower alleges. “DD [Deputy Director] Abbate told the audience that anyone who questions the FBI’s response or his decisions regarding the response to January 6th did not belong in the FBI and should find a different job – or something to that effect.”
Abbate allegedly went on to stress that the FBI was acting ethically and that its answers to both issues had been consistent.
He then “challenged all Special Agents in Charge (‘SACs’), that if they had an employee that did not agree, the SACs could have that employee call DD Abbate personally and he would set them straight,” the affidavit says.
In a typical Secure Video Teleconference (SVTC), the FBI director addresses all of the bureau’s divisions every Wednesday. Abbate allegedly made the remark at this meeting. According to the declaration, that function is frequently attended by the field office directors, foreign legal attachés, and headquarters divisions.
“I have witnessed hundreds of Director SVTCs and have never seen a direct threat like that any other time,” the whistleblower asserted. “It was chilling and personal, communicating clearly that there would be consequences for anyone that questioned his direction.”
Just the News received the following statement from the FBI:
“Throughout his 27-plus year career, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate has strongly supported the people and the work of the FBI, treating employees with dignity, compassion, and respect. He continues to proudly serve the American people and the FBI as Deputy Director. Deputy Director Abbate is going nowhere and any suggestion otherwise is baseless.”
In a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Wednesday, the whistleblower advocacy group Empower Oversight requested that he “independently corroborate” the claims made by the whistleblower. Other FBI whistleblowers who claim political prejudice within the agency and acts of retaliation against whistleblowers are presently being represented by Empower. The affiant “does not know and is not associated” with Empower’s other clients, the company emphasized.
Special Agent Stephen Friend, a client of Empower, had expressed concerns about the bureau’s suspected manipulation of crime statistics, the way it handled the defendants from the Jan. 6 incident, and its employment of SWAT teams. He further asserts that his suspension by the FBI was a result of his raising questions about those issues.
The group also wrote to important legislative figures to request that they investigate the allegations and hold Abbate accountable.
“FBI executives routinely retaliate against employees for expressing concerns about the FBI and the Department of Justice. If they belonged to any other federal law enforcement agency, they would have more effective remedies for these prohibited personnel practices,” Empower President Tristan Leavitt wrote. “But at the FBI, legally protected disclosures are not protected in practice. The vast majority of FBI employees don’t have the same civil service protections as other federal employees to obtain review of disciplinary actions taken against them.”
“The FBI is not a private club for FBI executives to make in their own image,” he continued. “It is an extremely important agency that is supposed to enforce the law without prejudice. Empower Oversight respectfully requests that you work swiftly to independently corroborate this information with other witnesses, publicly document your findings, and hold Deputy Director Abbate accountable.”
