Americans sent a clear message to the swamp after President Donald Trump swept all seven swing states and secured the popular vote in November. Since then, the MAGA base was promised an administration staffed with change agents eager to uproot the political establishment in Washington, D.C.
The winning streak continued after Kash Patel was successfully confirmed to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation alongside Deputy Director Dan Bongino, both of whom have been allies to the president. Patel and Bongino also shared a common mission going into the FBI: The status quo isn't working.
'If you embarrass that community, you will be ostracized.'
Now five months into Patel's tenure, several former agents and FBI whistleblowers described how their optimism has faded into disappointment.
"Kash Patel and Dan Bongino both used to consistently call for dismantling the FBI, or at minimum, for a massive restructuring of it," one FBI whistleblower told Blaze News. "The latest revelations only bolster the position that the FBI has become a secret police organization. Yet, there has been no mention of the criminal charges against FBI employees involved in this gross miscarriage of truth and justice. There has been no mention whatsoever of any form of punishment for those involved."
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"Like most of the FBI's known corruption, cover-ups, and illegal activities in recent years, these revelations began with yet another whistleblower," he added. "Only then did the FBI 'leadership' discover how deep the corruption surrounding this election interference was. Still, no whistleblower has been vindicated, reinstated, promoted, or provided back pay and damages under the 'new' FBI."
Other whistleblowers like Marcus Allen share this sentiment, saying the bureau is beyond help.
"Attempts to salvage the FBI are a fool's errand," Allen told Blaze News. "Its reputation is damaged beyond repair. It has lost the public trust and proven itself to be an enemy of the American people and rightfully elected American governance."
Allen previously worked in the FBI's Charlotte field office before he was abruptly put on unpaid leave for challenging the official narrative surrounding the January 6 protests. After being branded a conspiracy theorist, Allen was eventually given his security clearance back by former President Joe Biden's administration and was awarded back pay as part of a settlement with the FBI. Allen later resigned from the bureau.
"They know when they have been abandoned," Steve Baker, investigative reporter for Blaze News, said. "When they speak out, that goes against the culture of the FBI. It goes against the intelligence community at large. If you embarrass that community, you will be ostracized."
Clint Brown, who worked closely alongside Patel during his Senate confirmation process, pushed back on critics, noting that Kash has been heading the bureau for only five short months.
“Kash is an extremely methodical person and very strategic,” Brown told Blaze News. “He is going to work through everything methodically and in the right way. Not everything is a narrative. Not everything has a quick fix. We’re living in the real world.”
"The former leadership may have tarnished it’s own reputation, but they’re the institution that exists to catch the bad guys, and they still have to do that while fixing the place," Brown added.
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While continuing to "catch the bad guys," Patel has also lead the popular crusade against former Director Christopher Wray, which many current and former agents have championed.
Patel announced Tuesday that the bureau uncovered evidence of Wray lying to Congress about China's involvement in influencing the 2020 election. These findings also detail how the agency "recalled" a report that contradicted Wray's testimony under oath to Congress denying China's involvement.
"There are a dozen other people that we could put in the perp walk parade," Baker told Blaze News. "But the guy that needs to lead the parade is Christopher Wray."
This evidence is just the latest piece of a larger puzzle implicating the former FBI leadership for working to influence the 2020 election. Whether it's coordinating with social media monopolies like Facebook to promote one party over the other or censoring the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story, all signs suggest the FBI was involved.
"To date, this is unequivocally the worst example of FBI election interference," Steve Friend, another FBI whistleblower, told Blaze News. "The Steele dossier and censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop were abhorrent attempts to smear Donald Trump's reputation and deter voters from his camp. However, this latest revelation that the FBI covered for a foreign adversary to stuff ballots for Joe Biden strains all bounds of credulity and requires an honest conversation about whether the FBI should be dissolved."
"Disgraced FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate knew this," Phil Kennedy, a whistleblower and former FBI agent, said in a post on X. "He was the executive who allegedly said, 'FBI employees who question the bureau's handling of January 6-related cases can seek employment elsewhere.' He helped hide the crime and then imprisoned Americans demanding answers."
Patel has also led a broader effort to decentralize D.C.'s influence in the bureau and empower local field offices to continue doing the day-to-day work that impacts communities.
“As far as reforms in the FBI, there’s been a restructuring in the organization, and it’s still ongoing," Brown told Blaze News. "Agents have been moved out to the field, and this is all part of reorganizing the FBI over the long term and doing it methodically.”
RELATED: Exclusive: Oversight Project refers former FBI Director Wray to DOJ for criminal charges
While some former agents believe that the new leadership is a step in the right direction, other whistleblowers say the bureau remains unchanged, forever being driven by the status quo.
"The FBI has demonstrated an unwillingness and inability to understand the complexities of corruption within the FBI writ large and the simplicities of emergent national security and public safety threats," one whistleblower and former DHS employee told Blaze News.
"The new FBI deputy director has told Americans this is 'our FBI,'" Kyle Seraphin, another FBI whistleblower, told Blaze News. "It turns out, 'our FBI' is the same FBI it was last year: deceptive, duplicitous, and functioning on operational morality. The FBI serves the FBI, polishes the reputation of the FBI, and exists to prop up the legend of the FBI. Americans can see the results — promises without production, press releases instead of probable cause to arrest, and backroom document deals instead of disinfecting sunshine. The status quo is 'cutesy time,' and it is unquestionably continuing."
Although critics insist the culture remains unchanged, Brown says Patel was the right choice to push for a change. In order to successfully restore integrity to the bureau, Brown argues that Patel needs both time and trust from the rank-and-file agents.
"Kash is the guy that exposed the 'Russia, Russia, Russia' hoax," Brown told Blaze News. "He did it methodically, and the president knows that."
"The other thing is he picked the guy who’s going to relate to the brick agents," Brown added. "Trump’s philosophy, whether it’s FBI or DOD, he said the same thing about Pete Hegseth, is that he wants people who are doing the job to feel like they have a leader who understands them. So Kash has to earn trust within the FBI, while having to expose, methodically, while also having to catch bad guys, in order to reform the FBI. Without their trust, they’re not going to follow your leadership to fix things.”
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has one job above all: Tell the truth. The FBI’s motto — “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” — demands it. But beyond the moral and professional imperative, the director has a legal duty when communicating with Congress. Former Director Christopher Wray failed that duty. On Thursday, the Oversight Project submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice and FBI, calling for an investigation — and prosecution if warranted.
The case against Wray centers on two major failures.
Transparency matters, but accountability is what the American people demand.
First, U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted 20,000 scannable fake driver’s licenses produced by the Chinese Communist Party. The licenses were part of an election interference scheme aimed at boosting mail-in ballots for Joe Biden in 2020. Current FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino confirmed this in recent disclosures to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), noting that prior FBI leadership “chose to play politics and withhold key information from the American people.” Wray had to have known. He testified repeatedly that the 2020 election was secure. That was a lie.
Second, Wray misled Congress about the FBI’s so-called “Catholic memo.” He claimed it came from a single Richmond office and had been withdrawn. But new documents show the FBI circulated over a dozen related files to more than 1,000 employees and even drafted a broader version for wider circulation. As Grassley put it, “[Wray] is lying, and he ought to be followed up. Because if people that lie to Congress aren’t held accountable, it encourages more people to lie.”
The Oversight Project’s referral highlights three key moments when Wray gave sworn testimony contradicted by documented evidence. In September 2020, appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he denied any coordinated voter fraud effort. In March 2021, he flatly repeated his claim that foreign interference posed no threat — despite growing evidence suggesting otherwise. Yet Wray received regular briefings from Nikki Floris, head of the FBI’s 2020 election security and Foreign Influence Task Force. He acknowledged China’s malign influence campaign as early as July 2020. That alone undercuts his claims of ignorance.
The idea that Wray didn’t know about either scandal doesn’t hold water. Either he knew and lied — or he didn’t want to know. In both cases, that’s disqualifying.
And Wray’s record doesn’t earn him the benefit of the doubt.
He dismissed Antifa as an “ideology,” despite clear evidence of coordinated violent activity across multiple cities. He created the Foreign Influence Task Force that censored speech protected by the First Amendment — flagging the Hunter Biden laptop story and labeling credible sources as conspiracy theorists. He unleashed unprecedented FBI resources to pursue low-level January 6 offenders while ignoring real threats from abroad.
Under Wray, the bureau chased Republicans over flimsy allegations and turned a blind eye to millions flowing from Communist China to the Biden family. He rewarded agents who knelt for BLM while punishing whistleblowers who questioned the bureau’s politicization.
RELATED: The FBI was completely correct to keep an eye on Catholics
He effectively turned Pride Month into Pride Years, flooding the agency with DEI and LGBTQ propaganda instead of focusing on mission-critical tasks like national security and counterintelligence.
The FBI under Wray mocked its legal obligations — not just to Congress, but to the public. The bureau continues to fight in court to block the release of documents that would confirm its abuse of power.
Wray’s legacy is a textbook case of weaponization: Act aggressively when evidence hurts the political right, and bury it when it implicates the left. His repeated failures to disclose vital election-related information — and his lies about targeting Catholic Americans — expose a deeper pattern of deception.
The Oversight Project’s criminal referral gives the Justice Department and the FBI a chance to restore trust. Transparency matters, but accountability is what the American people demand.
And this case is only the beginning. We believe Wray and others at the FBI participated in a broader conspiracy to violate Americans’ civil rights. Investigating that conspiracy should begin with one simple act: prosecuting Christopher Wray.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced earlier this month that the bureau located an intelligence report from August 2020 that detailed "alarming allegations" regarding an apparent Chinese communist plot to interfere in the presidential election for the benefit of then-candidate Joe Biden.
Such allegations, if brought to light at the time, would have vindicated the concerns about voter fraud and foreign election interference then expressed by President Donald Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr, which were written off by election officials, Democrats, and the liberal media as "unfounded" and "preposterous."
Instead, elements of the intelligence community apparently covered up the alleged foreign election interference campaign.
"Former FBI leadership withheld the facts and misled the public on China's 2020 election interference," Patel stated on Thursday. "And they did so for political gain."
Patel noted in a separate message, "We're restoring trust — through transparency, not politics."
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, sent a criminal referral for former FBI Director Christopher Wray to the Department of Justice on Thursday, seeking accountability not only for Wray's alleged role in the apparent cover-up but for his alleged false or misleading statements to Congress regarding the infamous FBI memo targeting traditional Catholics.
The referral obtained by Blaze News, which was also sent to Director Patel's office on Thursday, alleges that Wray violated federal law by giving false and misleading testimony to Congress on the topic of known voter fraud efforts.
On Sept. 24, 2020, Wray told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the FBI had "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise."
On March 2, 2021, Wray suggested to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI was "not aware of any widespread evidence of voter fraud, much less that would have affected the outcome of the presidential election."
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The trouble with both statements is that they fly in the face of what the FBI apparently knew about the alleged Chinese communist attempt to swing the election for Biden.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on July 27, 2020, that between Jan. 1 and June 30 of that election year, CBP officers at the International Mail Facility at Chicago O'Hare International Airport had seized 1,513 shipments containing fraudulent documents, including 19,888 counterfeit U.S. driver's licenses.
"The majority of these shipments were arriving from China and Hong Kong, with other seized shipments arriving from Great Britain and South Korea," noted CBP.
Blaze News previously reported that the bulk of the licenses were intended for college-age students across numerous states and in many cases had functional barcodes.
The August 2020 FBI intelligence report helped make sense of this sudden glut of fake IDs, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime was mass-producing fake American driver's licenses in order to create voter identities for Chinese nationals so that they could vote with fake mail-in ballots.
'Accountability for the bad actors in government would be practically a case of first impression.'
Patel told Just the News that while substantiated, the allegations in the intelligence report "were abruptly recalled and never disclosed to the public."
The Oversight Project made abundantly clear in its referral that it was highly unlikely Wray was unaware of this report and the allegations therein when he testified before Congress in 2020 and 2021.
After all, Wray apparently received routine briefings about threats to the integrity of the 2020 election from Nikki Floris, the FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the time, who had raised the alarm in October 2019 about China "aggressively pursuing foreign influence operations."
RELATED: 1,004 days of betrayal for suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle
The House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicated in a December 2023 report that the FBI:
Congressional investigators began looking closely at the bureau's anti-Catholic animus after a memo from the bureau's Richmond field office was leaked earlier that year, tying adherents of the Catholic faith to violent extremist views.
RELATED: The FBI was completely correct to keep an eye on Catholics
While Wray previously testified to Congress that the Richmond field office produced only a "single product," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has demonstrated that not to have been the case.
Grassley revealed earlier this month both that the memo was distributed to over 1,000 FBI employees across the country and that the FBI produced "at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology and relied on information from the radical far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)."
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The Oversight Project's criminal referral alleges that Wray repeatedly gave false testimony about the Richmond anti-Catholic memo, noting that his "testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo’s production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI."
"Furthermore, a query of Sentinel (the FBI’s case management system) identified 13 documents and 5 attachments that included the term, 'radical traditionalist catholic' or 'Radical-Traditionalist Catholic' in the FBI systems," said the watchdog's criminal referral. "The Intelligence Memo itself states on page 24 of the PDF — '(U) Prepared by the Richmond Division and the Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit; coordinated with FBI Milwaukee and FBI Portland Divisions.'"
Between his statements to Congress about election interference and his statements about the FBI's anti-Catholic memorandum, the Oversight Project figures that Wray committed several criminal violations, including obstruction of proceedings before Congress; corrupt conduct; and making false statements.
When asked to comment on whether he expects Wray to be held accountable for his alleged violations, Howell told Blaze News, "I don't expect accountability, but we certainly deserve accountability."
"Accountability for the bad actors in government would be practically a case of first impression," continued Howell. "To expect it would be unrealistic optimism, but it should and could happen, and that's why the Oversight Project is making the case publicly and doing everything we can to make it more likely to happen."
Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.
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Grassley's office says that the evidence was never investigated further, despite signs of credibility, because of a 'sudden and "abnormal"' decision to stop further proceedings and 'bury the IIR's existence,' because, as the FBI put it, 'the reporting will contradict Director Wray's testimony.'
A former FBI agent quickly pled guilty to corruption-related crimes. His prosecution and admission seem suspiciously tidy.
The FBI relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a radically far-left organization known for labeling Christian and conservative organizations as 'hate groups' on its 'hate map,' to identify some of the Catholic groups to be targeted.
The Biden FBI blocked the release of a Nashville elementary school schooler's manifesto in the name of identity politics.
The move is intended to eliminate any legal obstacles used by bureaucracy to hide evidence of Biden admin weaponization of the FBI.
'Ensuring that they no longer work at the FBI is not retribution; it’s responsible leadership.'
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