A former FBI agent-turned-whistleblower over the agency's alleged handling of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot investigation tells Newsmax he blames troubles at the bureau on rules that have it acting "like a cop trying to hit a quota."
Appearing Thursday on "Rob Schmitt Tonight," former special agent Steve Friend said the FBI's "integrated program management protocols," which were implemented a decade ago, mean the agency sets "quotas for itself to meet. And in order to meet those, they have to gin up the numbers in any way possible to justify the funding that it receives from Congress."
As a result, he said, it's no mystery why the number of domestic terrorism cases has quadrupled in the FBI over the past 10 years.
All senior executives receive financial compensation and bonuses for meeting these metrics, he added.
Additionally, Friend said, President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Christopher Wray are given a talking point.
"They can say the FBI is the aggregator of all criminal statistics for this country. It's respected; its image is still untarnished for a large swath of the country. And they can say that the FBI can back these stats up."
Friend's Thursday testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, along with other agency whistleblowers, has gotten him labeled a "traitor" or not a true whistleblower in the mainstream media.
"Well, I'll put my patriotism bona fide days up against just about anybody," he told Newsmax. "I worked on Indian reservations for seven years and arrested 150 violent criminals. I took a transfer in order to work child pornography investigations before being volun-'told' to work on Jan. 6 cases."
He said he wasn't concerned initially that the FBI was acting politically, but noted the FBI was "manipulating statistics for financial reasons but also infringing on individual rights. ... I know that the Democrats and the media have labeled me that way. But I guess you get all the flak when you're over the target."
Friend and his colleagues testified that the FBI took actions to punish them for speaking out, including making it difficult or impossible to find work.
He hinted that the best way to reform the agency is to eliminate it.
"I think we need to take a step back and realize that the country existed before the FBI and it can exist after the FBI," he said. "And that doesn't mean that we're going to do away with federal law enforcement. There are plenty of other agencies that do a great job. And at least in my experience, I worked with a lot of local detectives and police officers who were very qualified as investigators."
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