A former FBI agent has taken his former employer to task in a scathing and revealing column posted over the weekend at Fox News Digital, accusing the bureau of shifting further left under Democratic President Joe Biden.
“Americans are losing trust and confidence in the FBI and this directly impacts national security. A staggering 63 percent view the bureau negatively — and the reasons are hidden in plain sight. Over the past few years, valid criticisms have been leveled at the partisan decision-making within upper echelons of FBI leadership,” James Gagliano wrote.
“Dating back to the 2016 Trump-Russia sham investigation, heavy-handed over-charging of Trump campaign surrogates, blatantly uneven treatment of right-wing and left-wing protesters and rioters, labeling angry parents speaking out at school board meetings as ‘domestic terror’ concerns, aiding Big Tech’s 2020 election suppression of information, seeming disinterest in Hunter Biden laptop revelations and Biden family’s obvious influence-peddling schemes, and a laughably absurd Richmond division intelligence product warning of ‘radical-traditionalist Catholics,’ the FBI has raised eyebrows,” he continued.
He went on to say that many retired agents who have long insisted that most of the bias comes from the top and not rank-and-file agents, they are beginning to change their minds as they see left-wing influences permeating through lower ranks. Gagliano noted that retired FBI Criminal Division Assistant Director Chris Swecker recently explained how it is happening:
“There has been a seismic shift in the [FBI] culture…[I]n comes [FBI director] Jim Comey and he basically parachutes all these DOJ political appointees into the FBI and slowly the culture shifts over Comey’s tenure and then under [FBI director] Chris Wray it’s accelerated because I think the type of recruit they’re bringing in is more opinionated, more idealistic, more liberal, highly educated, more Ivy League, and they tend to not just follow the facts, they tend to insert their own ideologies, their own opinions because the indoctrination that’s taking place in the schools these days – if you’re virtuous and you’re highly educated, you do everyone else’s thinking for them.
“You can decide that President Trump is not fit to be president, therefore we need to go after him. You can decide that domestic terrorists only exist on the right side of the political aisle, not on the left side of the political aisle. You can pick winners and losers…It’s no longer ‘Let’s just follow the facts.’ I’m going to say that’s at the highest levels of the FBI…but I think it’s beginning to percolate down to the street level [rank and file agents] as well.”
Gagliano went on to make a disturbing prediction as well.
“As the ideological underpinnings of FBI recruits continue to swing leftward, FBI leadership needs to remain ever more vigilant to ensure trust and confidence in FBI’s impartiality is not further degraded,” he wrote. “Why does eroded trust in the FBI matter? Because part of the business is securing trust of crime victims, investigative targets, and the American public – as they all serve as the agency’s ‘eyes and ears.’
“As calls to do away with the FBI grow louder, the FBI needs to heed these warnings. We need the FBI. But it can’t continue to whistle past the graveyard, refusing to embrace necessary reforms. To do otherwise will serve as the agency’s Waterloo,” he concluded.
