DEI run amok? Secret Service 'cat fight' outside Obama home raises questions



Two female Secret Service agents were caught on video tussling outside former President Barack Obama's residence in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, reigniting concerns that diversity, equity, and inclusion-related policies implemented under previous administrations continue to impact the agency negatively.

Around 2:30 a.m. on May 21, two agents assigned to guard the Obama home "got into a physical fight," according to Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics. Crabtree confirmed to Blaze News that both women are black. They were also likely armed at the time.

Crabtree told Blaze News that the altercation began after an agent with 15 years' experience became upset that her shift replacement, an agent with three years' experience, arrived late and in the wrong vehicle. The more senior agent then reportedly made a call to a Secret Service line, threatening violence in notably crude, colloquial terms.

"Can I get a supervisor down to Delta 2 before I whoop this girl's a**?" she said, according to audio shared by Crabtree.

RELATED: Secret Service places at least 5 agents on leave weeks after Trump assassination attempt

— (@)

'We likely witnessed the catastrophic consequences of sacrificing job knowledge, skills, fitness standards, and personal conduct in favor of immutable gender and racial characteristics to meet arbitrary diversity standards.'

Shortly after that call, the fight broke out, Crabtree explained. She later shared video of it on X:

— (@)

The crass language and brief scuffle both seem to qualify as "offenses" delineated in a "Professionalism in the Workforce" report prepared by the USSS and submitted to Congress by the Department of Homeland Security in 2015.

Screenshot of USSS report

In a statement obtained by Blaze News, the Secret Service acknowledged the "on-duty altercation" involving "two Uniformed Division officers." The statement claimed that both participants have been "suspended from duty."

"The Secret Service has a very strict code of conduct for all employees and any behavior that violates that code is unacceptable. Given this is a personnel matter, we are not in a position to comment further," the statement said.

A representative for Obama did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Crabtree indicated to Blaze News that the fracas is yet another example of the "lowering of standards" at the "once-vaunted agency." She added that officials must give a strong response to it to demonstrate that they take such incidents "seriously."

Former FBI Special Agent Steve Friend claimed it is yet another "real-world consequence" of identity politics.

"Here we likely witnessed the catastrophic consequences of sacrificing job knowledge, skills, fitness standards, and personal conduct in favor of immutable gender and racial characteristics to meet arbitrary diversity standards," Friend said in a statement to Blaze News.

'What I’ve seen ... is a different set of standards based on gender.'

As the incident apparently involved two black female officers, many have begun to wonder whether past DEI emphases still affect the agency today, despite President Donald Trump's efforts to eradicate DEI policies across the federal government.

Though the alleged aggressor in the fight has been with the force for 15 years, the other officer joined just three years ago under President Joe Biden, who appointed Kimberly Cheatle to be USSS director in 2022. Just the second woman in history to lead the agency, Cheatle took several steps to increase female and minority representation at the Secret Service, including joining the 30x30 initiative, which called on law enforcement agencies across the country to increase female participation in policing to 30% by 2030.

Cheatle was still at the helm on July 13, 2024, when then-candidate Trump was shot and nearly assassinated during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Iconic images from the shooting showed both male and female Secret Service agents hustling to protect Trump and to shuttle him off the rally stage to safety.

RELATED: This deadly experiment endangered Trump’s life — and imperils public safety

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Video taken moments later went viral because it featured multiple female USSS agents gathered around the vehicle that would transport Trump away from the area. On the video, a heavyset female agent — seen in the above photo sliding off stage — struggled to holster her weapon. She and other agents, according to Friend, "appeared overwhelmed by the situation."

Cheatle resigned 10 days later.

In February, Special Agent Rashid Ellis, a 13-year veteran of the USSS, stated publicly that DEI policies were at least partially responsible for the Butler shooting. "My initial thoughts when seeing the Butler assassination attempt was dread," Ellis told the Independent Women’s Forum. "My stomach was in knots watching it because we had known for years that this was coming."

Though black, Ellis said he was passed up for a leadership position in part because of the agency's focus on gender "quotas."

"I’ve always viewed [it] as an honor and privilege to serve in this capacity. However ... what I’ve seen with the United States is a different set of standards based on gender."

While sources told Crabtree that some women at the USSS do excellent work, others have difficulty meeting physical standards and maintaining professionalism.

"To be in the Secret Service, you have to be worthy of trust and confidence," Ellis explained.

"Real danger is out there. We need to restore confidence. We have to be focused on the threat that’s outside and the threat that’s in front of us."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Conspiracy: Does rogue FBI agent put freedom of speech at risk?



FBI Special Agent Shay Talley-Bradley represented herself as doing an official investigation for the FBI, investigating Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.). She insisted she was digging into stolen-valor claims — before changing it to looking into his business dealings.

“This should shock the conscience of anybody who believes that the FBI should be, or in fact now has been, renovated into an objective force for good,” FBI whistleblower Steve Friend tells BlazeTV hosts Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson on “Blaze News | The Mandate.”

“The fact of the matter is that the conduct of this agent — the fact that she engaged in an either off-the-books or some sort of coercive investigative matter, a sensitive investigative matter, and involved herself in a deprivation of rights, a color of law violation — speaks volumes of the fact that the rot exists not just at the very tippy top of the FBI,” he continues.


Investigative journalist Steve Baker decided to look into Talley-Bradley’s investigation himself, after the Florida-based special agent interviewed three sources who contributed to recent Blaze News investigative stories on Mills.

Talley-Bradley initially told the sources that she was investigating the stolen-valor claims, before pivoting to his alleged business dealings. While the sources provided her with the contact information of at least five individuals who had direct knowledge of Mills’ military background, she did not follow up with those individuals.

“Are you aware that Blaze Media just came out with a story about you today and your relationship to Congressman Cory Mills?” Baker asked Talley-Bradley in a video captured by Blaze Media.

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about, sir,” Talley-Bradley responded.

“Is it true that you tried to recruit a source as an undercover operative to investigate a Blaze Media journalist?” Baker asked, before the special agent repeated that she had “no idea” what he was talking about.

Friend is disturbed by her conduct and believes it could result in criminal charges.

“The FBI furnishes you credentials,” he comments. “You’re not a secret agent as much as you might be working on things that you think are secret or classified. You’re supposed to furnish those credentials upon request to anyone. You’re supposed to be a public servant, and the fact that she’s denying that, I think, also speaks volumes again to her character.”

“Let’s say she ran background checks on anybody over at the Blaze for investigation of people, for engaging in their First Amendment protected activity — freedom of the press, freedom of speech. That, again, is a violation of database use. That’s another deprivation of rights,” Friend tells Savage and Peterson.

“So, it could be a multiple-count charge criminally against this agent,” he adds.

Want more from 'Blaze News | The Mandate'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Blaze News original: FBI agents: True servants of justice — or bullies 'just following orders'?



With the likely confirmation of Kash Patel as the new director, a welcome change in culture at the Federal Bureau of Investigation seems almost inevitable. However, the hiring process at the agency is selective and the turnover rate is low. So while new faces will take over as top brass, the vast majority of the rank-and-file membership will remain the same.

To get a better understanding of the nearly 13,000 everyday agents who compose about a third of the FBI workforce, Blaze News spoke with two former everyday agents who have since blown the whistle on alleged misconduct at the FBI: former Special Agent Steve Friend and suspended Special Agent Garret O'Boyle.

According to Friend and O'Boyle, the lion's share of FBI rank-and-file agents are hardly as patriotic or as dedicated to their mission as many Americans have been led to believe.

The FBI and Trump's first term: Erosion of trust

When the leaders of some of the most powerful government agencies in the world opened Crossfire Hurricane, an investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump, in 2016, many high-profile figures attempted to make a distinction between some bad actors at the tops of these agencies and the supposedly devoted rank-and-file membership.

  • At a November 2016 hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) claimed that 79% of Secret Service employees at the time didn't "believe that senior leaders act honestly and with integrity."
  • In May 2017, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed President Donald Trump, then early in his first term, had fired FBI Director James Comey in part because the "rank-and-file" agents no longer trusted him.
  • At a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2018, FBI Director Christopher Wray called the FBI "the finest group of professionals and public servants I could hope to work for." He continued: "Our people are very mission-focused. They're accustomed to the fact that we do some of the hardest things there are to do for a living."

However, the investigation into the wildly specious claim that Trump had somehow colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election caused a major rupture in the trust the American people had for federal law enforcement. The investigation was led by special counsel Robert Mueller — himself a former FBI director — who staffed his team with rabid Trump-haters, including Andrew Weissmann of the Department of Justice Criminal Division and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two FBI officials who carried on an adulterous affair before and during the investigation.

'Just went to a Southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support.'

Strzok and Page exchanged thousands of damning texts on their agency-issued devices, promising to "stop" Trump from being elected in 2016 and to implement an "insurance policy" on the off chance that he was inaugurated.

They also disparaged Trump voters as "ignorant hillbillies." "Just went to a Southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support," Strzok once wrote.

The impact of their anti-Trump animus extended beyond just extramarital flirtations. Not only did Strzok edit Comey's statement about Hillary Clinton's email scandal in 2016 to claim she had been "extremely careless" rather than "grossly negligent," Strzok also conducted the fateful interview with former national security adviser Michael Flynn in January 2017 that turned Flynn's world upside down.

Flynn, a retired Army general, was fired and eventually charged with lying to the FBI during the Strzok interview. He pled guilty, though his sentencing was repeatedly delayed until 2020, when Trump pardoned him.

'Tremendous power': The FBI and January 6

The public perception of the FBI tanked even further after Trump left office after his first term, mainly on account of the unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago and the ruthless investigations into the melee at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

News reports in recent days confirm that perhaps as many as 6,000 FBI employees were placed on January 6 investigations between 2021 and 2024.

A class-action lawsuit against the Trump DOJ has also since been filed by nine FBI employees. Not only does the lawsuit imply some fear of public exposure for J6-related work, but it also makes plain the ardent anti-Trump political bias of the plaintiffs, who accuse the department of attempting to retaliate against them for investigating and prosecuting the "crimes and abuses of power by Donald Trump, or by those acting at his behest."

'There certainly are some true believers who ... were very eager to inflict as much damage on J6ers as they could.'

Jan. 6 does indeed appear to have been an inflection point for the agency. According to former Special Agent Steve Friend and suspended Special Agent Garret O'Boyle, the FBI altered protocols following the incident to expand the size and scope of the investigation.

Friend explained to Blaze News that standard procedures meant January 6 should have been treated as "one case in Washington," no matter how many people were involved. "But they didn't do that," he said. "They instead told everyone to open a separate case for every single person ... [and] investigate it where they live."

Friend and O'Boyle, who host a podcast together, also agreed that "domestic terrorism" provided the pretense for investigating J6 so extensively.

"The people that have come in in the last few years, the brand-new agents, they're all being put specifically only on January 6," Friend said. "And they're being told in the training at the academy that white supremacy is our biggest threat."

"The vast majority of new agents were being assigned to the domestic terrorism squads, and the vast majority of work that was happening on those squads was January 6-related," O'Boyle added.

Because the FBI chose to open a new case for each J6 defendant and then investigate these in their respective home states, the number of "domestic terrorism" cases in field offices across the country skyrocketed, assuring those in charge that they were doing important work, Friend said.

"So they all hit their metrics, all hit their quarters. And then the president, the AG, and the director can get up there, show a map, and say, 'Look at this huge spike in domestic terrorist cases that we have around the country.'"

When asked whether the rank-and-file agents agreed with the importance of targeting J6 defendants, Friend and O'Boyle indicated that feelings were mixed.

"So there's a lot of true believers amongst the new agents," Friend said, as well as "a lot of people that are just following orders."

In an entirely separate interview with Blaze News, O'Boyle used nearly identical language about "true believers" and "following orders."

"I think there certainly are some true believers who ... were very eager to inflict as much damage on J6ers as they could," O'Boyle told Blaze News. "But by and large, I really think it's just people who are content with following orders and not taking a stand for what they know is right and what they know is true."

The possible ramifications of "just following orders" are not lost on either new FBI recruits or career agents. Both Friend and O'Boyle explained to Blaze News that during their respective training days at Quantico — Friend in June 2014, O'Boyle in July 2018 — they and their classmates took a field trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., to appreciate more fully the deadly results that can come from "just following orders."

"They teach you that Auschwitz didn't happen on day one. It happened a little bit at a time because the police just follow orders," Friend recalled. "You are never to just follow orders if you believe that you're being ordered to do something that is unethical, immoral, out of step with your oath of office, unconstitutional, [or] unlawful."

O'Boyle indicated to Blaze News that the trip was the most "sobering" and "important" day of training because it hammered home the "tremendous power and tremendous trust" given to armed law enforcement officers such as FBI agents.

"And what are you going to do with it?"

In light of the explicit warnings against "just following orders," after Friend came forward with his allegations of misconduct at the bureau regarding J6 investigations, he felt betrayed by fellow agents who chose their careers and steady paychecks over morals and duty.

"I had conversations with people when I was about to make my disclosure ... and they were like, 'We agree with what you're doing here, but we don't want to risk our jobs on it,'" he said.

"And that, to me, is an even worse offense than the communists who think they're doing the Lord's work. Because at least they have principles. At least they think that they're going after the terrorists that are out there. They might be that deluded, but at least it's principles-based.

"It's the people that just follow orders that are the worst."

O'Boyle believes that J6 is a kind of poisonous tree at the FBI that bore insidious fruit, resulting in other apparently unconstitutional investigations, including into Christians praying outside abortion clinics, parents demanding answers at school board meetings, and those exercising their free speech rights in a distasteful but otherwise entirely legal manner.

"[In] the last five years or so, especially even going back to Russiagate, the FBI has, by and large, forsaken that field trip [to the Holocaust Museum] and forsaken that oath to the Constitution," he said.

The FBI did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

'Repulsive': The FBI, Steve Baker, and Blaze News

For Blaze News, the January 6 investigations were not simply a major story to cover. They became personal when our investigative reporter Steve Baker was swept up in them and, after years of threats and insinuations, eventually charged with four misdemeanors even though he had merely entered the Capitol that day to document the incident as a member of the free press. He was an independent journalist and not working for Blaze News at the time.

'They knew that each and every action taken would be amplified on social media and in the press.'

According to Baker, the special agent assigned to his case, Craig Noyes, acted in a "professional" manner during many of their in-person interactions and accommodated Baker's schedule when planning for interviews, even as the so-called statement of facts with Noyes' signature on it lied or grossly misrepresented Baker's actions related to J6.

Screenshot of FBI statement of facts

For instance, shortly after leaving the Capitol, Baker grabbed an adult beverage and sat down to film a podcast episode about the day's events with a colleague who walked about the Capitol grounds but never entered the building. During their conversation, Baker made several joking remarks, including that he regretted not stealing a laptop belonging to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) when he had the chance. "God knows what I could've found on their computers if I'd done that!" he chuckled.

Noyes and others at the FBI apparently didn't laugh along. Instead, they claimed such statements revealed that Baker saw himself as part of the riotous "mob."

Still, in light of the brutal treatment so many January 6 defendants received in the past few years, Baker considers himself lucky. Baker said he was never swatted, de-banked, placed on a terror watch list, forced to abide by travel restrictions, including to and from D.C., or had his social media accounts frozen.

"Why was I excluded from these actions when so many others were subjected to those and so many other punitive actions? I believe it directly correlates to the media attention I was able to stir up in the earliest days of their investigation in my case," Baker told Blaze News. "They knew that each and every action taken would be amplified on social media and in the press."

Screenshot of FBI statement of facts

Because Baker was never sentenced for the J6 charges, he was ineligible for the pardons and commutations Trump issued on his first day back in office. However, within days, the Trump DOJ filed to have Baker's case dismissed, and Judge Christopher Cooper, who had presided over several of Baker's hearings, soon signed off on the dismissal.

Baker told Blaze News that shortly after receiving word that his legal "nightmare" was over, he sent a text message to Special Agent Noyes, asking him to have a "beer meet-up" like they'd apparently previously planned. "Hahaha, appreciate the offer but I'll pass for now," came the reply, he said.

O'Boyle was less charitable in his characterization of Noyes, who was in charge of multiple J6 investigations, not just Baker's. "He is a disgrace to anyone who's ever worn the badge. He lives comfortably in a $800k 3600 sq ft house and yet everything about him is repulsive and not worth the slightest bit of envy," O'Boyle posted to X hours after Trump issued the J6 pardons.

Noyes did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

'Compromised moral character': The FBI and career advancement

Aside from J6, another major problem at the FBI, Friend and O'Boyle suggested to Blaze News, is the process of advancement, which they say encourages less experienced but more ambitious personnel to contrive ways to embellish their resumes.

In most cases, a new recruit joins the bureau between ages 23 and 37 and is forced into retirement after 20 years or at age 57, giving agents a narrow time frame in which to climb the ladder. One key to advancing quickly, Blaze News learned, seems to be to take credit for the work others have done.

Friend said that during his time working on Indian reservations in Iowa, new FBI project managers would introduce themselves, disappear more or less for about 18 months, and then reappear when they wanted to be promoted.

"They had six months to look for the new jobs, and they would start asking me questions about my cases. And they would say, 'Tell me about this case. Brief me up on it,'" Friend explained.

"They were looking through my cases and trying to find one that they could say they had some sort of oversight with [because] if they put one piece of paper with their name in the file that I had done everything on, they could claim credit for it."

Friend further claimed that most of these ladder-climbers had very little understanding of how law enforcement actually works. "They didn't know how to investigate crime," he said. "... They didn't even know how to arrest someone. They'd never put handcuffs on anyone."

'It's a lot worse in the lower levels than people think.'

O'Boyle painted an even grimmer picture of the lengths to which some lowly agents were willing to go to advance: "The type of people that promote, you'll often see that they only have five or six or seven years of actual investigative experience, because typically the people who are rising [through] the ranks are doing so at any cost, and they don't care how many throats they have to slit along the way to get there."

O'Boyle indicated that once in power, these agents then prove their mettle further by bullying subordinates and collecting metaphorical "scalps."

"Typically you would find one or two people on your squad getting singled out for punitive management. And it was often like, why are you targeting that guy? What did he do that was so different than anybody else?"

Such agents already have a "compromised moral character," O'Boyle said, and since they range from the lowliest recruits to the highest echelons, the FBI is riddled with those who do not uphold traditional American values.

"Maybe 15, 20 years ago, the rank and file were by and large patriotic Americans," O'Boyle said. But now, "it's getting closer and closer to just being completely overrun by the cultural Marxists."

"This is not just a problem with the people at the top. They clearly are the worst of the worst, and they're steering the ship. But I would say especially the last probably decade or so, certainly the last five years, the types of people they're hiring out of the wokest of the woke 'educational institutions' is fundamentally changing what the bureau used to be," he added.

"It's a lot worse in the lower levels than people think."

'Best-case scenario': Kash Patel and hope on the horizon

O'Boyle and Friend, who both indicated they joined the FBI because they believed in the mission and wanted to serve their country, are optimistic that the FBI can begin returning to that core mission under a second Trump term.

'We need @Kash_Patel confirmed ASAP.'

Not only are both men confident that Kash Patel will be confirmed as FBI director, but they believe that he will be able to effect change there, even if, as Friend suggested, the agency is still "infested" with people who want to thwart his efforts.

"I didn't think that there was a solution for the FBI. I thought we should just do away with it, shatter it to a thousand pieces, scatter it to the wind," said Friend, who was financially devastated after he came forward with his J6-related allegations against the FBI. Friend changed his mind about the bureau after he "looked at Kash Patel's resume ... [and] interacted with him."

"We need @Kash_Patel confirmed ASAP," he tweeted on January 23.

O'Boyle — who has been on unpaid suspension from the FBI for about two and a half years after blowing the whistle on a range of issues from alleged COVID and J6 tyranny to persecution of undercover journalist James O'Keefe — called the pending confirmation of Patel "the best-case scenario for me personally."

"I talked to one of my attorneys yesterday, and he's more than optimistic about what lays ahead for me."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Blaze News original: FBI whistleblower warns Patel: DEI rot at FBI deeper than you can imagine



The week before President Donald Trump took office for the second time on January 20, many of his supporters cheered as news broke that the FBI had shuttered its Office of Diversity and Inclusion the previous month. However, some of that celebration may have been premature, since the ODI staff apparently remain with the agency, merely having moved to other departments.

To learn more about the ways the FBI has attempted to prepare for Trump's second term, Blaze News spoke with former Special Agent Steve Friend, who blew the whistle on the agency regarding its investigations into January 6. Friend offered a bleak illustration of the agency as it currently stands, as well as hope for the tenure of prospective new director Kash Patel.

ODI closes up shop: Notable but limited victory

On January 16, Fox News broke the news that the FBI Office of Diversity and Inclusion was now closed. "In recent weeks, the FBI took steps to close the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), effective by December 2024," the agency said in a statement, as Blaze News previously reported.

During campaign season, Trump repeatedly pledged to end DEI-related infrastructure that had lately sprung up in federal agencies, so the news of the now-defunct ODI seemed to signal that Trump had already made an impact, even before he returned to the White House.

'The reason is, CORRUPTION!'

Trump, however, responded to the news not by gloating but by issuing a stern warning.

"We demand that the FBI preserve and retain all records, documents, and information on the now closing DEI Office — Never should have been opened and, if it was, should have closed long ago," he posted to Truth Social. "Why is it that they’re closing one day before the Inauguration of a new Administration? The reason is, CORRUPTION!"

Trump did not elaborate on the nature of the alleged corruption, but Friend indicated to Blaze News that the FBI was still playing games with Trump, publicly following Trump's agenda while privately preparing to impede it.

To demonstrate, Friend then read aloud to Blaze News an internal memo confirming that rather than losing their jobs, the DEI proponents formerly of the ODI had transferred to the equal employment office, a subdivision of human resources: "In recent weeks, the FBI took steps to close the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, effective December 2024. Special emphasis programs have been realigned under the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity Affairs."

The OEEOA may be a separate entity from the ODI, but the newcomers at the OEEOA may find their colleagues amenable to their previous DEI advocacy. A memo regarding job openings at the FBI, issued on an unknown date, claimed that the OEEOA's mission, in order "to ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans, the Department of Justice is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment."

Then, in an EEO-related policy statement, which is also undated, the FBI noted the "diverse" nature of the American citizenry. "Consistent with the FBI’s Core Values, and just as the FBI is committed to serving every United States citizen regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or any other protected basis," the statement continued.

"The American people pay for this. And they don't know how bad it is," Friend said.

'Already scrubbed from their website': Evidence goes viral

Though an agency that Americans once respected, the FBI has lately fallen out of favor, especially after the public learned that former Director James Comey and others spied on Trump's first presidential campaign under the baseless pretense that Trump surrogates had somehow colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

The image of the FBI sank even farther during the Biden-Harris administration, when the agency ruthlessly targeted pro-lifers peacefully protesting outside abortion clinics as well as patriotic Americans who, as Blaze News investigative journalist Steve Baker described it, simply walked "through an open door at the Capitol on Jan. 6."

Republicans in particular became openly angry with the agency after the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and the lawfare campaigns launched against him. An NBC News poll taken just after Trump was indicted in 2023 showed that 56% of Republicans viewed the FBI negatively at that point and just 17% positively.

'ATF began implementing OPM’s initial guidance on DEIA ... in response to the president’s executive orders.'

With public opinion of the FBI now at perhaps its lowest point this century, some on social media responded to the news of the shuttered Office of Diversity and Inclusion by carefully perusing FBI webpages to discover the professional fates of erstwhile ODI officials.

Article III Project attorney Mike Davis and suspended Agent Garret O'Boyle — an apparent target of the FBI for blowing the whistle on alleged misconduct related to Jan. 6 — claimed on X that Dr. Jenise Carroll, the former chief diversity officer at the FBI, is now in charge of HR.

"The 'Chief Diversity Officer' was Dr. Jenise Carroll," O'Boyle wrote in reply to Davis. "She is now a Section Chief for the @fbi's Human Resources Branch. She is already scrubbed from their website, unless you use @waybackmachine."

— (@)

Carroll has spent at least a decade bouncing around various DEI-related divisions in the federal government. In 2015, she worked as an adviser to the director of diversity management and equal opportunity for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense.

A colonel in the United States Air Force, Carroll then became the deputy director of the Secretary of the Air Force Department of Diversity and Inclusion. She was named chief diversity officer of the FBI last May.

Blaze News could not independently verify that Carroll is now a section chief in human resources at the FBI, though J. Michael Waller of the Center for Security Policy gave a similar report. Waller added that Carroll's webpages "are being scrubbed off the web."

In response to a request for comment, the FBI gave Blaze News the following statement: "We are complying with the executive order and Office of Personnel Management implementing guidance. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion has been dissolved, along with component DEIA programs."

Of note, conservative outlet Townhall also did some digging into the DEI leaders of another federal agency — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — and apparently discovered that Lisa Boykin, the chief diversity officer of the ATF Office of Director, still remains in the same office but under a new title: senior executive.

ATF public affairs specialist Johnny Michael told Blaze News: "ATF began implementing OPM’s initial guidance on DEIA immediately after its issuance on January 21, 2025, in response to the president’s executive orders. We have proactively taken the necessary steps to ensure compliance with this guidance, including by placing impacted personnel on administrative leave."

'Stall and wait him out': FBI and plans for Patel directorship

Garret O'Boyle claimed in his tweet that "the subversion started November 6th," the day after Trump won the 2024 election, and Trump's victory in November certainly seems to have led directly to the shake-up at the FBI regarding DEI.

His nomination of Kash Patel to serve as the next FBI director also seems to have set off alarm bells with the top brass. When asked why the FBI would simply shuffle DEI-focused agents around, Friend told Blaze News that members of the FBI upper echelons don't want the agents "to get fired when Kash Patel comes in."

"They're promoting a lot of people into senior executive service roles, which are very hard to get rid of. They're creating jobs for them so that they can just exist," Friend explained.

"This is all a total spinning to be in compliance with what they perceive to be the new administration and a new director."

'They're going to just try to bubble-wrap him like they did to Chris Wray, keep him away from things.'

Should Patel be confirmed by the Senate, he will take over for acting Director Brian Driscoll, himself a placeholder following the resignation of controversial former Director Christopher Wray. Trump tapped Wray to lead the FBI in 2017 after the firing of James Comey, an act that triggered a special counsel investigation — spearheaded by Robert Mueller, yet another former FBI director — into so-called Russian collusion.

Trump repeatedly denied the allegations and described the Mueller investigation as a "witch hunt." Trump was vindicated in 2019 after Mueller admitted in his final report that he and his team — initially made up of anti-Trump activists like Andrew Weissmann, Peter Strzok, and Strzok's former mistress, Lisa Page — found no evidence of Russian collusion.

Despite the perceived bias and questionable premise of the Mueller investigation, Wray frequently sided with the Mueller team and against Trump, his boss. In 2018, Wray told Lester Holt of NBC News that he did not believe the investigation was a "witch hunt."

"I've been consistent. I get asked this a lot," Wray began. "I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it's a professional investigation conducted by a man that I've known to be a straight shooter in all my interactions with him in my past life in government and certainly since then."

While Wray's statements during and after Trump's first term made him wildly unpopular in MAGA circles, Steve Friend hinted to Blaze News that Wray may have been under the thumb of others within the FBI, including Deputy Director Paul Abbate, and that those same people may soon try to contain Patel's effectiveness as well.

"Once [Patel] makes it through ... down the road — like three, nine months later — then they're going to just try to bubble-wrap him like they did to Chris Wray, keep him away from things, give him all these little side projects," Friend said.

"'You've got to travel around the country, [go to] 55 field offices, and meet everybody,'" Friend imagined officials telling Patel. Friend believes these officials will try to keep Patel distracted "and not let him do anything," so that by the time midterm elections come in 2026, everyone will have a different focus.

"So they're hoping to sort of stall and wait him out."

Patel is scheduled to sit for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Though he is one of many bold nominations by Trump, Patel will probably be confirmed since Republicans now enjoy a 53-seat majority and Vice President JD Vance can always act as tiebreaker, should three Republicans join Democrats in voting against him.

The agency is certainly presuming that Patel will soon be in charge, Friend claimed. "There's already a plan in place to thwart him, to slow-roll him," he said.

More specifically, some agents intend to "slow-roll" the background check on Patel as well as the approval process for his security clearance.

The problem with their plan is that Patel already has a security clearance, Friend claimed. When pressed about how such a key piece of information could have gone unnoticed by FBI leaders, Friend gave a frank reply: "Because they're not competent."

Though Friend has a rather low opinion of the leadership and the agency in general, Friend remains optimistic that the FBI can be salvaged under Patel.

"I've been on record a couple years [that] I didn't think that there was a solution for the FBI. I thought we should just do away with it, shatter it to a thousand pieces, scatter it to the wind," Friend acknowledged.

"But having looked at Kash Patel's resume, actually having interacted with him," Friend said he is now optimistic about the future of the agency.

Friend also hopes that going forward, more agents will be more transparent about any dysfunction or misconduct they witness at the FBI. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance a couple years ago when a few of us came forward," Friend said, referring to January 6 investigations.

"It's a twice-in-a-lifetime chance to get on board with a new director here."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

‘A nation in distress’: How the FBI’s war on ‘domestic extremism’ threatens liberty



Determined to employ the unrestrained force of the federal government against Donald Trump supporters who were at the Capitol during the unrest on January 6, 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray wanted to assure Americans that his agency “had deployed every single tool at its disposal and its full arsenal of investigative resources” to target their families, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens who exercised their right to free speech and free assembly.

“This ideologically motivated violence,” Wray told a Senate committee, “underscores the symbolic nature of the National Capital Region and the willingness of domestic violent extremists to travel to events in this area and violently engage law enforcement and their perceived adversaries.”

What Wray called 'domestic violent extremism' is a fiction contrived to frame the political right as terrorists and increase FBI budgets.

The FBI’s post-January 6 operations were intended to terrorize the opposition into silence. Dissidents would continue to be prosecuted, and anyone foolish enough to organize in the “National Capital Region” — that is, Barack Obama’s center of operations — would have their lives ruined, just like January 6 defendants. Here, the political effort to shatter the opposition intersected with the professional ambitions of Washington’s permanent bureaucracy.

As the U.S. had begun to downsize its presence in the Middle East, national security bureaucrats and their parasitical private sector partners saw that the industry that had made them rich was now at risk. Counterterrorism is a multibillion-dollar Beltway business, filling a trough that feeds Republican and Democratic constituencies including the State Department, the FBI, and other spy services, as well as defense contractors, NGOs, and think tanks.

The “insurrection” reinvigorated the industry, which easily adapted to the new model with counterterror experts plugging in the same keywords — radicalization, self-radicalization, lone wolves, etc. — for what is essentially the same enterprise, except that instead of fighting dangerous terrorists abroad, they are targeting Trump supporters. What Wray called “domestic violent extremism” is a fiction contrived to frame the political right as terrorists and increase FBI budgets.

“In our office in Daytona, for instance, there were no legitimate domestic terror threats,” says former FBI agent Stephen Friend. “There were no active cases that were any good. My first day in Daytona they gave me this case with these guys that just lived in the backwoods. They hadn’t done anything. A tip came that these guys might be domestic terrorists, but there was nothing to it. And I wanted to close it, and then supervisors were insisting, ‘No, we should get an undercover or an informant to go bump these guys and see if they’ll sell us a weapon and then we could charge them with a gun crime.’ And I said, ‘That’s entrapment, and I’m not interested in doing that.’”

‘You do what you’re told’

For the FBI, January 6 was a bonanza. It let Wray and FBI leadership boost the nearly nonexistent numbers of domestic terrorists to thousands in order to please their political masters and strengthen their hand in bureaucratic battles. With a live-action example of domestic violent extremism in the nation’s capital playing out on broadcast media around the world, FBI leadership had what it needed to press Congress to cough up more money.

“January 6 happens in Washington D.C., so the Washington field office would have responsibility for that case,” Friend said. “And then typically that office would open one case. And you investigate the subjects you want to investigate, and if they don’t live in Washington D.C., as most of the Jan. 6 people didn’t, it wouldn’t make sense to hop on a plane to go interview them. You would cut a lead, and an agent in the office where the subject is located would go do the interview.”

But that is not what happened with the January 6 cases, Friend explained. “They stood up a task force in Washington, D.C., which was doing the investigative actions. So these tips would come in by the hundreds and the thousands with the directive to field offices to open a case on these people. And we did it for every single person.”

By making the field offices open separate cases, the FBI turned January 6 into thousands of cases, one opened for every investigative subject. Spreading those cases around the country is how the FBI cooked its books so it could pronounce right-wing extremism as the No. 1 threat to U.S. national security. The fact is that most of the January 6 cases were not even domestic terrorism cases.

“All the January 6 cases are either one of two things,” Friend said. “They’re either 266, which means domestic terrorism, but the lion’s share of them are 176, which is a criminal charge, parading and rioting. But those riot charges are being investigated by joint terrorism task forces, and they’re being called domestic terrorist cases for statistical reasons. They’re juking the numbers. But people don’t know that. They think, ‘January 6, oh, that’s domestic terrorism.’ They’re not, not even by the way the FBI treated it.”

When Friend pointed out to his supervisors that they were violating FBI procedures, they turned on him.

What had once been the world’s premier law enforcement agency had become a homegrown version of a Soviet-style internal security service, an American Stasi.

“They said that I was a simp for January 6,” Friend recalled, “but I said, ‘You have righteous cases here if somebody was engaging in violence, but as a matter of disclosure, you have to turn over Brady material [information favorable to the defendant] that you departed from your own rules. If the defense finds out about that, that’s a bad black eye for us. What if the guy is a really bad dude and now you lost because you were so hell-bent on hitting your numbers that you violated your own protocols and now he walks?' And they said to me, ‘Well, Steve, we’re not losing any of the cases.’”

And indeed, that was true. The Justice Department has won convictions against nearly every January 6 defendant who has come before a Washington, D.C. jury. And that is another reason why federal law enforcement made all its cases out of a jurisdiction that votes overwhelmingly Democratic. It is still unclear, however, when citizens on the left first resolved to punish fellow Americans for voting differently.

Friend’s misgivings started to grow. When he was assigned to transport a January 6 suspect, he spoke out. “They were going to send a SWAT team, arrest him, and then my job was to take him from where we arrested him to court and drop him off. I said, ‘This isn’t fair, and this is dangerous. We’re sending SWAT teams to guys’ houses that said they’d cooperate. The guy said 18 months ago that he would cooperate, and you have no contact with him for a year and a half, and now you send a SWAT team to his house? He has no expectation that you’re coming. There’s lots of different ways you can bring him into custody. You guys are a hammer looking for a nail.’”

Friend’s superiors couldn’t understand why it mattered to him. “I said, ‘You gave me training on identifying if I think that we’re doing things the wrong way, and I’m throwing the flag,’ and they said, ‘Yeah, you have an oath of office, you have training, but your real duty is to the FBI, and you follow orders and do what you’re told. What’s your problem with it?' And I just said we’re supposed to be part of something bigger than that.”

That was it for Friend. In 2022, he became an FBI whistleblower after making protected disclosures to Congress about the FBI’s manipulative investigations of January 6 protesters.

What had once been the world’s premier law enforcement agency had become an arm of the ruling party, a homegrown version of a Soviet-style internal security service, an American Stasi serving not the people it was sworn to protect but the regime that funded and armed it. Thousands of Americans were swept up in the nationwide January 6 dragnet, detained for months, then years, their charges being bulked out with years-long sentencing enhancements.

Caught in a nightmare

Many were broken by it, like Matthew Perna, a 37-year-old from Sharpsville, Pennsylvania.

“Matt decided to go to the Stop the Steal rally because he wanted to be part of what he thought was going to be a historic celebration,” said his aunt, Geri Perna. “He did not believe that the election results were going to be certified. And he felt that by joining this huge crowd, they would be heard, and something unprecedented would take place. And actually, something unprecedented did take place, and Matt got caught up in it.”

Videotape shows that Perna walked into the Capitol through open doors past five Capitol Police officers. He held his cell phone aloft to record the events. He walked around for less than 15 minutes, then left through a different door.

“He went back to his hotel room and did a live Facebook feed where he talked about the day,” his aunt said. “He was upset that Pence certified the vote and Biden was named president. He said it’s not over yet. He meant that there will be investigations and that the truth will eventually come out.”

Geri Perna told me she was at home in Florida a week or so after and saw a Facebook post saying the FBI was looking for people who had attended the rally. “I clicked on the link, and I was shocked to see my nephew’s picture as one of the people that was wanted,” she says. “And I let my family know. My brother visited Matt at 6:00 that morning and Matt already knew about it. He honestly didn’t think he did anything wrong. He didn’t hurt anybody, didn’t steal anything, he didn’t break anything.”

Perna told his attorney that he wanted it to end as quickly as possible. The attorney told him that the quickest way to make it end would be to plead guilty.

He called the local FBI field office and explained who he was. The FBI made an appointment to visit him the following day. “Two officers showed up to question him about what happened,” Geri Perna told me. “He told them everything. Matt did not have an attorney because he thought this was just a mistake. And the FBI left that day giving Matt the impression that they had everything they needed.”

When she heard about the meeting with the FBI, she got on a plane to Pennsylvania to see Matt. “We got an attorney,” she says. “The FBI called, and they said they had a few more questions, and they showed up with five more officers and that’s when they arrested Matt. They searched his home, confiscated his laptop and all his phones. They took him to the local office in New Castle, and they booked him, then released him three hours later. They took the sweatshirt that he was wearing that day that said ‘Make America Great Again’ as evidence, and that was when the nightmare began.”

Perna’s attorney told him that he had nothing to worry about. He had no record, and all they would do was give him a slap on the wrist. “About 10 days later,” Geri Perna told me, “they added the obstruction charge to over 200 of the defendants at the time, and Matt was one of them. And that’s when everything got ugly. And this just began a series of postponements and delays.”

“And Matt was constantly worried, what were they going to find?” Perna said. “And every time there was a hearing, it got canceled and then postponed indefinitely. Matt’s mental state began to deteriorate. He saw how many more people were being arrested and charged with very serious crimes and taken to the D.C. jail. Matt had guilty feelings because he was not in jail and other people were. Time was wearing on, the cases kept mounting, Christmas was approaching, and Matt had become a recluse in his home. He was always a healthy eater. He was now eating destructively. He just didn’t care any more.”

Perna told his attorney that he wanted it to end as quickly as possible. The attorney told him that the quickest way to make it end would be to plead guilty.

“They weren’t offering to drop any of the charges,” Geri Perna explained. “The lawyer told them that he was looking at a six- to 12-month federal prison camp, with minimum security. Matt agreed to this. His late father suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and they were going to use the fact that Matt was his caregiver to maybe get the sentence reduced to house arrest. That’s what they were hoping.”

Driven to despair

On December 17, 2021, Perna pleaded guilty to obstruction of Congress, a felony, and three related misdemeanor charges.

“His sentencing hearing was scheduled for March 3 and a week before he called his attorney, and he said, ‘I have a very bad feeling about my sentencing hearing being on March 3,’” she said. “That is the day his mother died. And honestly, I don’t believe any of these dates are coincidental. They are playing with these people’s minds. They are torturing them mentally, and Matt just did not want to have the hearing on that date.”

His attorney told him that his hearing was postponed, but the prosecution was planning to ask the judge to add a sentencing enhancement, which could increase the sentence by many years.

“We later learned that Matt told his friend that he was looking at nine years. That just broke, Matt,” his aunt said. “He called me sobbing on the phone. I could barely understand him. He could barely put a sentence together. He was stuttering. He was sobbing and he was apologizing over and over to me about how this impacted my friendships and how much guilt this poor kid felt for bringing our name into the newspapers. I kept telling him, ‘Don’t worry, Matt. We’re going to tackle this. And you have to have faith.’ I think they had at this point convinced him that he deserved whatever they gave him. That Friday afternoon, early evening, my brother called me and told me to book a plane ticket because Matt had just hanged himself in his garage.”

Matthew Perna’s funeral was held March 2, 2022 in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. “We had an honor guard that requested to be there for the viewing the night before and then for the funeral,” his aunt said. “They did a flag-folding ceremony, and they handed my brother a flag, and my brother was confused and he said, ‘I don’t understand. Matt wasn’t in the military. Aren’t these funerals normally reserved for veterans?’ And they told him, ‘In our eyes, Matt was a bigger patriot than most of the veterans we’ve ever stood guard over.’”

The partisans in the FBI had driven a patriot, a good man, to despair. “We found out after he died about all of these amazing random acts of kindness that he did for people,” she says. “People showed up at the funeral and told us about all the things he did. There was a family with a bunch of kids who’d been in a restaurant one day and Matt picked up the bill for them.

“I made a phone call when I was going through Matt’s paperwork from his case. There was a phone number and a name in there for the prosecutor on Matt’s case, the one that was going to try to push this sentencing enhancement. I called the number and got the prosecutor, and I said, ‘I want to know why the sentencing enhancement.’ And he says, ‘Let me start off by saying that if Matthew just could have waited another month, I don’t think the sentencing enhancement would have stuck with the judge anyway.’ And I said, ‘Do you realize the threat of that enhancement and the jail time that went with it is the reason my nephew took his life?’ And he says, ‘Well, there are many people in our department who felt very bad that Matt took his life.’ And I said, ‘You and the many people in your department are responsible for Matt taking his life.’”

Geri Perna advocates on behalf of January 6 defendants and speaks with the families constantly. “I don’t know how many people have committed suicide over J6,” she told me. “You’re never going to know. I’ve had three people reach out to me to tell me about friends or neighbors who killed themselves after they saw their picture on there. And you’ve never heard about them because they never got that far. But what it did to our family has changed us all. The direction this country has taken is unbelievable. And it doesn’t seem to have a light at the end of the tunnel. We are a nation in distress.”

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from “Disappearing the President: Trump, Truth Social, and the Fight for the Republic,” by Lee Smith (Encounter Books).

Targeting citizens for their beliefs: The SHOCKING truth about government weaponization



Weaponization of the government’s power against its opponents and even its own citizens has been steadily growing worse and for a reason.

FBI whistleblower Steve Friend is well aware as to why that is.

“To set the foundation for it, you have to go back to Barack Obama assuming office in 2009. So, a Kamala Harris presidency would mean 20 years. That’s an entire government career, a full generation of hiring that has gone across every single agency,” Friend tells Steve Deace of “The Steve Deace Show.”

“Now you have 20 years of ideologies,” he continues, adding, “and that’s how you’re getting things like McDonald's the other day, who had one franchise allow him to do one photo opportunity and then we had an E. coli breakout, CDC all over that one, and then the United States senators accusing them of price gouging and driving the stock share price down.”



Not only did the government jump at the chance to punish McDonald’s for allowing a photo op with a political opponent, but citizens across the country have fallen victim to the FACE Act.

“In the Biden administration, it’s been applied more than any other presidential administration in history,” Friend explains. “92% application towards pro-lifers, not people who were subject to fire bombings at their crisis pregnancy centers.”

“People do not know exactly the powers that are at their fingertips,” Friend continues. “They have the ability to have an assessment from the Patriot Act, which means that they can open up an investigation on any American for an articulable purpose. Don’t need probable cause of a crime.”

Deace is rightfully disturbed.

“In other words, you’re describing investigations in search of crimes. Not criminal investigations, but investigations in search of crimes. That’s what you’re describing,” Deace says.

“Find me a man, and I’ll show you the crime,” Friend agrees.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve's take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

'Without hesitation': FBI whistleblower warns Kamala WILL JAIL her opponents



After the weaponization of Biden’s DOJ — where peaceful pro-life activists and attendees of January 6 were jailed — it should come as no surprise that Democrats want to crack down harder on American citizens.

Recent comments made by Virgin Islands delegate Stacey Plaskett on the weaponization of the federal government couldn’t have made that more obvious.

“It’s necessary for the public and the media to try and provide cover for the eradication of the Department of Justice and the FBI,” Plaskett said, claiming without these agencies there would be no checks “against white nationalism, great replacement theorists, Christian nationalists, white fragility, fascists, and the twice-impeached convicted felon former President, and would-be dictator, Donald Trump.”

FBI whistleblower, Steve Friend, believes Plaskett reflects “entirely what they’re all interested in.”

“They’re sending the new agents to the academy and teaching them that, basically, the only thing they’re going to be focusing on is white supremacy,” Friend tells Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson of “Blaze News Tonight.”

Friend notes that the Christian nationalism label is “a trap” and that the FBI “has found the hack around the First Amendment” and “your ability to worship as you see fit.”

Savage is concerned that if Kamala Harris does get elected, this could get worse.

“What would happen if Kamala Harris gets elected as president and they can even push this further?” she asks Friend.

“A Kamala Harris presidency will only further weaponize the FBI. They have their targets,” Friend explains.

“The narrative now is that half the country are domestic terrorists,” he continues, warning, “and now you’re going to have a Kamala Harris presidency, God forbid, in the next couple of months if she is elected, where she will take the FBI, the teeth on this attack dog, against her political enemies — and not hesitate.”


Want more from 'Blaze News Tonight'?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

FBI whistleblower WARNS about agent investigating 2nd Trump assassination attempt



The FBI is investigating the incident at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida as a second assassination attempt against Donald Trump — but is the FBI trustworthy to lead this investigation?

FBI whistleblower Steve Friend, who exposed what really happened in the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid — is blowing the whistle again. This time, he’s warning that the same FBI office is handling this investigation.

“The guy who authorized that, and then dummied evidence up, is the guy in charge now of the FBI’s investigation of this shooter,” Glenn Beck says, shocked.

“It actually goes a little bit deeper than that Glenn,” Friend comments.

Friend explains that Jeffrey Beltre was once the deputy assistant director of the security division for the FBI before assuming his current post as a special agent in charge of Miami’s FBI.

His prior position is the branch that goes after the whistleblowers.

Friend notes that Beltre has said that “they were looking to purge from the ranks people who were military veterans because he thought that they were disloyal, as well as people who attended regular religious worship ceremonies and opposed the coronavirus vaccine.”

When he announced he was going to Miami, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate, and Executive Assistant Director Jen Moore told him to cleanse his social media accounts of all the anti-Trump vitriol.

“Now, he’s in a position of authority in the FBI Miami office, and that is the office that has the responsibility for investigating this latest assassination attempt,” Friend explains.

“So you think the guy who wanted to purge the FBI of military people, religious people, and Trump supporters might not do an honest investigation?” Glenn asks.


Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Former agent REVEALS FBI ‘playbook’: Grooming the ‘emotionally disturbed’



Questions surrounding the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump have remained unanswered — but FBI whistleblower and former agent Steve Friend has some theories.

“I’m not hearing anything satisfying coming from the FBI or the Secret Service on the assassination attempt,” Glenn Beck tells Friend, who has an idea of why that is.

“I think one of the most disturbing elements that hasn’t been picked up on was when the deputy director of the FBI, Paul Abbate, said that they were going to investigate it as domestic terrorism,” Friend explains.

While that may seem reasonable to the average American citizen, Friend is well aware of what that means.

“The FBI is now going to slap a classified label on this investigation, and they’re not going to be able to be transparent because you don’t have a need to know,” he tells Glenn, before noting how troubling the new claim of the Pakistani national’s plans to take Trump out is.

“This is what I like to call the ‘playbook’ that the FBI has been running the last two-and-a-half decades, particularly since 9/11,” he explains, adding, “What they do to justify their existence as a bureaucracy, as a self-licking ice cream cone, they will identify a vulnerable person, emotionally disturbed, maybe someone with radical intentions but not capable of carrying forward an actual attack without the involvement of the FBI.”

The FBI will then use confidential human sources and undercover agents to groom these vulnerable individuals for as long as it takes before they’ll engage in an activity that can be labeled as terrorism.

“The added wrinkle here was that they imported this Pakistani through the border, they sponsored him arriving. The FBI Dallas office actually was the signee on him arriving,” Friend tells Glenn, adding, “They followed him and orchestrated this plot that could never have happened without the involvement of the government.”

“We are now running terrorists so that we can justify our existence as an agency,” Friend says, disturbed. Friend also explains that according to the FBI, the Pakistani national just happened to speak to an informant about soliciting a hit man as soon as he arrived in the United States.

“The bottom line is that the FBI is inventing these cases, so that they can go to Congress and say ‘Look at all the good work we have done here, why don’t you give us enhanced funding, why don’t you give us enhanced tools,'” Friend says.




Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

'Patriot Act 2.0' — Lindsey Graham's DANGEROUS plan after Trump shooting



FBI whistleblower Steve Friend has a warning in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump — and it’s not for former President Trump.

“There was an exchange between deputy director Paul Abbate and Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, where to the layperson it seems reasonable the FBI wants to open up all avenues, remove the blindfold, have no blinders on, consider the fact that this could be assassination, this could be domestic terrorism,” Friend tells Jill Savage of “Blaze News Tonight.”

However, to the non-layperson — this could mean something more sinister.

“When you designate something as a domestic terrorist investigation, that enables you to make it classified, and when you have a classification code on there, you have to have a need to know in a security clearance,” Friend explains.

Because of that, the FBI can withhold information.

“The American people are not going to have the transparency that we ultimately need for this investigation,” he says.

While the FBI’s actions are concerning, that’s not Savage’s only concern.

“Lindsey Graham had a very concerning solution for the issues with the investigation,” Savage tells Friend.

“We have encrypted apps of an assassin, a murderer, and we can’t get into them all these days after,” Graham said. “That needs to be fixed folks. I’m all for privacy, but to a point.”

“What if, in the future, somebody’s using these apps to communicate with a foreign power. I think we need to know these things. We need to know them in real time,” he added.

Friend says that Graham’s suggestion would effectively render the Fourth Amendment a “dead letter, at that point.”

Graham’s use of the phrase “real time” is also concerning.

“Real time, which means continually monitoring it,” Friend explains.

“This is the government assuming that a tool will be used for ill, when it is just a tool. Because we don’t trust the government in this country. The job of law enforcement is not supposed to be easy. You’re supposed to have reasonable suspicion, probable cause, the burden is supposed to be there,” he adds.


Want more from Blaze News Tonight?

To enjoy more provocative opinions, expert analysis, and breaking stories you won’t see anywhere else, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.