Will Cain Country - Behind The Misdeeds Of The FBI With An FBI Whistleblower

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

On this episode, Will sits down with FBI Whistleblower & Fellow at Center for Renewing America, Steve Friend, to discuss how the FBI has changed drastically from its original mission. He discusses the inside story of where the organization has become corrupt and lights a path forward to return the institution to its original purpose. Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Behind the Miss Deeds of the FBI with an FBI whistleblower. It's the Wilcane podcast on Fox News podcast. What's up? And welcome to Monday. Welcome to a new week. As always, I hope you will download rate and review this podcast wherever you get your audio entertainment. at Apple Spotify or at Fox News Podcasts. I had a good weekend.

I'm in a good mood. So forgive me, if this sounds like, I'm grumpy. But we've got to get this airplane situation sorted. We've got to get this worked out. We live in a civilization, which means in a society, we have to adhere to some unwritten rules. Not everything has to be written down. Not everything has to be law.

Some things are suggestions. Some things are understood. When you are boarding group three, you do not stand at the opening of the gate that says boarding group one, even if it says one through four. I know you have a three, but if they haven't yet called one, you're effectively serving as the Great Wall of China or a beautiful wall right there in front of the ability of groups one and two to board the plane. I'm just saying, I don't think you're confused. I don't. I think you're nervous that you might miss your boarding group and you want to be at the front of that prospect. And I think you know you might box a few people out and you're happy with that little accident.

I don't think you're truly confused about where you should stand. There's way too many of you. One, then two, then three. Okay, and here's why I don't think it's an accident. Another unwritten rule. Okay, when we are deplaning, right? We're all getting off. If your row, for example, is behind my row, or let's make this less personal, if my row is behind your row, I really shouldn't jump ahead of you in the aisle.

You know, even if somehow I got my bag down because you were over by the window, you know, let's say I was on an aisle seat of row 14, but you're a window seat of row 13. And it takes you a minute because, you know, the aisle and the middle seat have to get out. But I've already got my stuff out of the overhead bin because I was an aisle seat. And I'm ready to pop, baby. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to get off this plane. Just because I can doesn't mean I should leap in front. You sort of need to, of course we know this, right? Let each row completely empty out ahead of you. And I don't know why that's not intuitive, but if it didn't work that way, we would debaward the plane with all of the aisles leaving, then all of the middle seats, and then all of the

window seats. And maybe, I don't know, maybe that's more efficient. Maybe you're the whole foods of checkout lanes, you know, maybe you've figured out the snake is faster than the multiple lanes. And you know this. But, you know, society is not with you. Civilization is not there. So you need to let it catch up or get yourself an airplane CEO job because otherwise we have

to obey by some unwritten rules. It's just part of civilization. It's been a while since I downloaded the travails of Will's weekly airplane experience. But I am, honestly, I'm in a good mood. I had a great weekend. Fun time. Fun time with my pals, Pete and Rachel, truly pals, on and off camera. But it's time for the good times to end. Has to end. It all, I don't mean in some, like, existential way. I don't even mean a career way. I mean, it's got to end in that. I mean, it's got to end in that I got to get it together. I'm two months out of the commitment to swim in the Navy SEAL swim from the Statue of Liberty to Manhattan. Two months.

Ask me how much I've swam. Ask me. Zero. Not, I haven't gotten wet. I haven't gotten wet. Ask me how much I've been working out. Zero over the last two weeks because I've been sick. You knew that when I had that deep manly voice for a couple podcasts.

And then ask me how. how I've been eating. Just had two pieces of domino's pizza, which is so underrated, it's ridiculous. I know all the New York pizza and then the fancy. Look, man, we're not going to be able to move on until we can all agree how great domino's pizza is. Two slices of domino's pizza, a couple Mexican leftover burritos and refried beans. That just happened, just now, just happened. So starting tomorrow, the good times have to end. I've got to get in the pool. Otherwise, I'm going to be an embarrassment on national television, not just in my performance, but in my vanity. I've got to get it together. Good times have to end starting tomorrow.

I would like to think the conversations like the one you're about to hear bring the good times to an end for the party at the FBI. We've talked a lot about the politicization and the weaponization of the FBI, and it's easy to dismiss it as a political talking point because only one side talks about this point. But it's quite another thing when you hear it from a former FBI agent. And he tells you exactly the things he was assigned to do, the things he had a problem with, his vision of what should have been his job at the FBI. Steve Friend is a FBI whistleblower. He is someone with deep knowledge of the history of the FBI. He's also someone that I find has deep wisdom about the constitutional order, the purpose of the United States of America, and its law enforcement at a federal level about his understanding of the FBI. I think you will enjoy.

I think it's important to hear this conversation with FBI whistleblower, Steve Friend. Steve Friend, FBI whistleblower. We've had several fascinating, albeit three-minute conversations on Fox and Friends. and I thought, this is worthy of something deeper, something longer. So I'm glad to have you today on the Will Cain podcast. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. This is great.

So that term, whistleblower, when is it that you decided, as an FBI agent, to blow the whistle on what you were seeing inside of the FBI? Well, I never made a formal decision in my mind to give myself the whistleblower label. I just knew that what we were about to engage in at my office in Daytona Beach, Florida, I felt was, went against my oath of office as a special agent. And that was pertaining to the January 6 investigations that they were going to be executing some arrest and search warrants on. And they were for individuals who some were accused of misdemeanors, some were accused of felonies. But regardless, they were represented by attorneys and they had pledged to be cooperative with us in the event of an arrest. arrest and I felt that that was an unnecessary use of force and a risk to the public safety and sort of put myself in the room of being the guy the day before Waco or Ruby Ridge and

just had the had that feeling that what we were doing was was potentially going to create a disaster and I said that with somebody who had SWAT experience and had arrested lots of violent criminals in the past it wasn't like I was a shrinking violent and I had that concern and then as well as I had concerns about the way that those cases were being managed. I consider myself a law enforcement professional. I want my cases to be really buttoned up when they go to trial. And I knew for a fact that we were departing from the rule book within the FBI on those cases. And how? In what way were you departing from the rule book? The FBI is very specific the way that you're supposed to manage your cases. And the way that

January 6 played out, it should be one case in Washington, D.C. with a whole bunch of subjects. Instead, decision was made to open a separate case for every single person. So you turn one case into thousands of cases. And then on top of that, spread those cases to the field offices around the country, wherever the person lived. So now we're creating this false narrative that domestic terrorism is around the country as opposed to this one-time incident. And once that decision is made, though, even though it's sort of unusual, it is allowable. Those offices, those agents are supposed to have carte blanche on their cases. But we weren't doing that. We were answering to a task force in Washington, D.C. on our own cases. And they were making the investigatory decisions for them.

So I foresaw something that would happen where I would go to trial and a defense attorney who's spot on would say, agent friend, you're the case agent here. Did you make any decisions or do anything? And I would have to say no, because I'm going to be honest on the stand. And that would be devastating to a righteous prosecution. So I've seen that you've given this type of statement before, Steve, that there was an effort. And I don't know that you were limiting it to January 6th. And I'd love for you to correct me if I'm wrong on that, but where the FBI was, in essence, juking stats to increase the perception of domestic terrorism across the country. Was that limited to January 6th in your experience?

No, it's not. It's created cases all across the country on different matters. It's just that January 6th is probably the most egregious example because there are so many subjects involved there. I know one of my counterparts at the hearing that we had a few weeks ago, Garrett O'Boyle, spoke about. He had a militia case in the Kansas city division where there were four people that were associated with a militia that there was being investigated. And again, it was pressure to open up four cases with one bad guy, as opposed to one case with four. And that allows you to increase the total overall number by 300%. That seems like, I think for someone listening, it seems administrative. It doesn't

immediately register why that might be important that you're opening up four cases instead of one or thousands in the case of January 6th instead of one. But I can see how it would inflate the stats. Is that different than how you would handle, say, an organized crime case that you were looking into or something else? Was the FBI cataloging and counting domestic terrorism cases in a different manner than it was other crimes? Well, in my experience, that was different than anything I'd done. I'd done some cases that involved multiple subjects and always just had one case. But in the intervening time since my suspension and having communicated with other people, that is a problem.

that is rampant across the board. It's not just within national security. It's within criminal division as well. And it all sort of goes back to the integrated program management metrics that the FBI established for itself about 10 years ago. And it's basically a quota system. And it's tied to budgeting for the agency itself and for compensation for the senior executive service members. So hitting those numbers means that they get fairly significant financial compensation. So the FBI has an incentive. a budgetary incentive to increase the appearance of crime across the board. And what you're pointing to is specifically when it comes to the idea of domestic terrorism,

it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy that somebody somewhere is getting an extra budget if you make this look like a big deal. Precisely. And I think just I came from law enforcement before I was in the FBI. There's always statistic manipulation. Everybody wants to look good. But it was the exact opposite as a police officer where he would have a burglary and then you'd have a sergeant come up to you and say, hey, we don't want the burglary stat to say it's a trespass. And so the role of police work in my book should be to bring crime down. But the FBI is now incentivizing all of its personnel to bring the crime stats up.

And that is definitely out of whack with what law enforcement should be about. You and I had a conversation, Steve, on Fox and Friends, about the original purpose of the FBI. You had a fascinating statement in my mind where you said it was originally a law enforcement organization. and it has metastasized into an intelligence operation. We'll go into that more in just a moment. But the FBI has always found domestic threats. That's its charter to look inside the United States, not outside the United States for threats to the nation.

I think what you told me at the time is it's just the only thing that's changed is who the FBI considers a threat to the nation. Yes. And I think if you look just a cursory review of the FBI's history, maybe the argument can be made that it's an extra constitutional agency that was started without, it was asked for forgiveness, not permission. And then Congress essentially backdated it with some legislation. But the FBI, instead of being about preserving the constitution, has been just about preserving the status quo. And it was easy to misunderstand that in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s because the FBI was pursuing communism. which was opposed to our constitutional Republican form of government.

And so everybody assumed that the FBI is just American and constitution-loving when, in effect, it was actually just preserving the power structure that currently existed. And now it's still fulfilling that role, but because our government is so far left-leaning, it is now going about preserving the status quo for those individuals and pursuing people who are problematic to that. And those tend to be on the right-leaning political worldview. So let's go back. Let's spend a minute looking back at that history. So, you know, we've all read or heard at least about the popular history of the FBI being involved in investigating, for example, Martin Luther King Jr., the Black Panthers, in general, the black liberation movement, as you point out, communism at large.

In your mind, as you look back on it now with your experience, was that a proper use of the FBI? I like how you start with the idea that the FBI was probably extra constant. institutional, you know, this thing was the vision of one man, largely, Jay Edgar Hoover. And I would have to think in the beginning, it just pursued his vision, whatever that was. Status quo was whatever Jay Edgar Hoover and his relationships with the White House considered to be the status quo. So was the pursuit of all of those threats at that time, in your mind, just? Or was that also just in defense of the status quo? I think it's the latter. I think if you look at Jay Edgar Hoover's personal politics, I don't think they're they really even matter and I think his politics were about the FBI what makes the FBI this integral agency within the federal government and the necessary at all possible future administrations so yeah you look at the Martin Luther King with co-intel pro where the FBI essentially was sending him letters encouraging him to commit suicide and even take a step forward a little bit beyond that through the Vietnam War the FBI had cases on deserters is that really the role of

federal law enforcement at that point, that seems like something that would be more of a DOD issue. A little bit advanced beyond that, you have weather underground where there was this disruption and arguably domestic terrorism that was going on and again was opposing our, at that point in the 80s, was definitely moving more towards a conservative direction, and the FBI went out against them as opposed to other groups. And then eventually we get into the 21st century. When mission creep came home after September 11th and the terrorist threat was pretty much stamped down by our military overseas. The FBI had to continue to pursue its counterterrorism angle. And it's just been a self-looking ice cream cone that's continued to grow out of control. But wouldn't you

and I both agree there is, there is legitimate purpose for the FBI in dealing with a terrorist threat at home. Like, you bring up the weather underground. Now, my direct knowledge, I mean, I've read enough to get in trouble here when it comes to the weather underground. But I know that they did at least seek out. And I think that, no, they executed some bombings throughout their, their history here. Yeah. And that would seem to legitimately fall under the purview of the FBI. I think it does. I think, though, that the proper role for a national security apparatus is to be more of the century on the wall looking for threats, as opposed to how it's now evolved into something that's more. We're going to, we just need to drum up a certain number of cases.

every year to justify our existence. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for the FBI to come in and say, we didn't have a lot of terrorism this year because we're doing the job of being centuries on that wall and the bad actors overseas or even internally are deterred from taking action. Instead of we're going to have these cases such as what they had in 2020, where that Wolverine Watchman militia, which was not predisposed to carry out an attack, but was infiltrated with informants and undercovers, was sort of pushed into this whole farcicle

scheme where they were going to kidnap and execute Gretchen Whitmer, which without any sort of federal involvement in that case, those guys wouldn't have been able to execute that, even if they thought it crossed their mind. Yeah, that seems to be the case with that, where the FBI helped plant the idea, cultivate the idea in these guys' mind. You know, it's kind of at the same time that the FBI is doing this budgetary self-justification, growth in crime, the wild thing is that the federal criminal code is expanding being, you know, by, like, compound interest, like multitudes, no one to this day, I believe,

can actually quantify the federal criminal code as it expanded so much. And all of that theoretically also, not just theoretically, it legitimately is under the purview of the FBI. So their charter, the federal laws at which they're empowered to oversee, and then them living beyond both that charter and those laws have really, from its original vision, to today, I mean, you'd be probably hard pressed to find another agency in the federal government that's mushroomed larger than the FBI. It's enormous, and they've now come around to this conclusion that they can weaponize the process. The process is the punishment for so many

individuals that are deemed to be targets. And there's that saying of, show me the man, and I'll show you the crime. And that has come to pass greatly. If you look at something like Michael Flynn, the FBI initiated a ruse to essentially talk to him in the hope that he would lack candor, and they could charge him with being dishonest or lacking candor with talking with a federal agent. That's a process crime. That's something that U.S. 1001, that's a fallback when you have nothing else. You're going to charge the guy because you can't prove anything else. But instead, they've weaponized that process, chose their target, and then tried to get him to commit a violation. And I actually had that experience myself with my suspension.

When I talk to the security division, they admonish you, you better not lie. And then they try to set up a Kafka trap where you would lie and they could bring charges down on you and then use the search warrant process to come and bang on your door at six o'clock in the morning with a SWAT team because look I'm a I'm an American citizen I have a second member right there's a firearm here and the SWAT matrix says if there's a firearm present SWAT can come so let's go to your story again for just a moment so I was reading about you know where you went wrong with the FBI so you see all these you see what you think is um the wrong application of of the FBI when comes to January 6th. And I think it was both you and Marcus Allen fall under this description

of your sin was advocating for alternate theories on January 6th. Is that correct? And what does that mean by alternate theories? Well, Marcus was just doing the job of getting open source information and presenting it. He wasn't making really a political argument one way or another. He just said, hey, we should be aware of this alternate argument out there for carrying our investigations forward. there was no anything. It was just going out and seeing what a newspaper article is available. For me, I was worried about us being at departing from the rules for investigation, which I felt was Brady material, which should be turned over as a matter of due process.

And then there being a reasonable concern of public safety risk. I had nothing to do with the politics of it. And I told my supervisors that fact. I said, look, the politics doesn't mean anything. I didn't vote for Donald Trump. So there was, it wasn't a situation of, sour grapes or anything like that. I just want the process to be pure. I think the nature of law enforcement is you're a system idealist, and we go after a system disruptors, those are

criminals. I feel like the FBI is now involved into this system disruptor, and I want a correct course. And I don't have to be right. The whistleblower statute says you just have to be reasonable, and it's incumbent then on the agency to do a self-evaluation or true look in and maybe deem that you are right or you are wrong. But regardless, I was willing to go back to work. You know, Steve, I'll tell you, I went to law school. And when I was approaching my final year of law school, I was thinking about different things I wanted to do with that legal education. And I'll tell you, I considered the FBI. And I think back about why I would have wanted to do that. And I knew that I think lawyers had a good chance or a better chance or perhaps an increased chance

of making it through and being selected for the FBI. And I look back at why, and I think I wanted a sense of adventure. I think that there was this impression that the FBI was an elite law enforcement service, you know, took an extra level of accomplishment to become an FBI agent, and all that was somewhat appealing. I bring this up to ask you this. You know, you just said, you weren't political, you didn't vote for Donald Trump and that you, would you say, should be not a system disruptor, but a system, I can't remember what your words were. Idealist. Idealist, yes. What I want to ask you is, you know, I'm thinking about what was motivating me. What motivated you?

Like, you have a lot, you have a strong understanding of the FBI's history. I'm curious, did you at the time you joined the FBI? And what motivated not only you, but most of the guys around you? Like, why did they become FBI agents? I think everybody comes from a different perspective, a different skill set. I know that there's a lot of people in law enforcement. And I came in with a law enforcement background. I was a police officer for a number of years.

And this was just in my mind, the NFL of law enforcement. I felt a little bit like I couldn't really make the impact that I wanted. I was making a good impact on my community, but I had the opportunity to have the resources at my disposal and take to the next level. And obviously, there's a pop culture aspect to it. Look, I saw a point break. It looks like a really fun job. And I was fortunate to get that chance to do some of the more niche work within the FBI that does impact and does let you do the violent crime that you see on TV and in movies. whereas most people in the FBI aren't in front of a judge.

They never go to court. They never go to trial. A lot of people never actually arrest somebody because they work in the national security space. So the reason I ask you about your motivation and the motivation of other officers is this. You know, when we see what's happened to the FBI right now, and it seems to inescapably be in a political direction.

And we're going to talk more about why in just a moment. There's a lot of people that see all this and go, well, what's going on? Why aren't there more Steve friends? Why aren't there more Garrett O'Boyles? more Marcus Allens, more whistleblowers. Why is it become so politicized? Why do I see these texts, you know, in the Durham report about FBI agents saying, we'll never let Donald Trump win? You know, I'm curious, it's hard to rationalize a bunch of people who want to be system idealist, reconciling themselves to what has, what the FBI has become. So you either ask yourself one of two reasons. They're quiet, they're silent, and they're willing to go along to get along. Their motivation to get in was never political, and they're still fulfilling whatever that is.

The NFL of law enforcement is still being fulfilled for them. Or they don't think what they're doing is political. And you and guys like a will actually don't represent the voice of a lot of people in the FBI. I think it's across the board. It's not if, but, it's and also. I think there's certainly a lot of military people who come from the background of, hey, you've got to follow orders regardless of what you're told and you kind of check your your partisanship at the door and and you're even your critical thinking to a certain extent. I think there's a lot of people that are

worried about the retribution and that the FBI was obviously not afraid to come after me and come after Garrett and come after Marcus some pretty reprehensible ways. And people are concerned about that. And I think righteously so. And they've been able to actually from the inside launder information to me now that I'm on the outside and I can expose things every single day. I'm having people come to me with with information. And it's frustrating because, you know, I, when I took my oath, I took it seriously. I kind of have this laugh line where I say the oath of office is an iPhone user agreement. And I think that's become sort of the nature for too many people. It's something that you say to get the job and don't really consider it. But for me,

it was a big moment. And it was something in my life that I will never forget. I got to stand up and take an oath that was very similar to that of like a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln, and these stalwarts and these huge icons within our culture. And it was, it was meant something to me. And to be in the FBI was a dream job for me. But part of my job was to raise the alarm that I thought existed and that needed to bring out. And if that meant I couldn't retire from the FBI, that's okay. I didn't join the FBI so I could say I retired from the FBI.

I joined to do the job of an FBI agent. and that point raising in blowing the whistle was my job. Let's address some of the criticism of you. This is from an NBC article. This is what they say. And actually, I think the headline is to undercut the idea that you're actually a whistleblower because at the beginning, the first paragraph of the article, they describe you and O'Boyle and Alan as self-described whistleblowers.

And then they go on to say that you told management in Florida you would not work January 6th cases, refuse to participate in the execution of a court authorized search and arrest. He espoused, friend, an alternative narrative about the events of the U.S. Capitol before he downloaded documents from the FBI system to an unauthorized flash drive. Finally, they say you participate in multiple unapproved media interviews, including an interview with Russian government news agencies and made a surreptitious recording of an FBI meeting with management that violated state law. What do you say to those accusations? I think that there's a reasonable explanation for everything, but unfortunately NBC didn't reach out to me. to, for any sort of clarity, you know, when it came to participating in those, those arrest operations, those were the ones I raised concerns about, I said, look, I think I'm, I'm doing my

job. I'm not trying to be insubordinate here. I actually suggested alternate ways that we could go about it. They did not take those, those under consideration. I volunteered for alternative duties that day. And at the end of my conversation with my management, they didn't give me an opportunity to not show up. They told me that you are going to be AWOL tomorrow. You're to stay home. So I essentially followed orders and stayed home and stocked a day's pay at their instruction. As far as downloading documents, yes, I downloaded a copy of the handbook for FBI employees, which for matters unknown to me is housed on a classified system, even though it's an unclassified document. I used an FBI jump drive to do so, and I did so at the

behest of my attorney. My attorney said, look, Steve, I've never defended an FBI agent before. can you get me a copy of the handbook so I know how the disciplinary process works. So I got a copy of the handbook. I suppose I could have printed it off and re-scanned it and sent it to my attorney. But, you know, and definitely with those sort of situations using an unapproved jump drive, that's that warrants, I guess, maybe a nasty email. As far as contact with the Russians, I was contacted by a show that was said it was the whistleblower's show and that was originally how it was presented to me. I did an interview, and if you actually watched the interview, I've presented no new information here that I haven't presented there about my concerns.

And then after the fact that show was, I guess, sold to Russia today and then aired. So again, misled. So at the time you did the interview, it wasn't under control of a Russian news agency, government news agency. It was, I guess, a third-party production agency who sold it to RT. I believe so. I tried to do some research on the timeline of it. and I believe my interview was before, but regardless, there was no Chiron that identified itself as Russia today or anything like that. It was just the whistleblowers show. And certainly the people that reached out to me didn't have any foreign sounding names or accents or anything of that. It didn't

think it was anything nefarious involved with that. And then finally, I actually requested and gain permission to speak to the media from the FBI. I passed to speak on matters of my whistleblower disclosure. They gave me that approval. And now they've gone back on that and said that I need to get approval for any sort of media contact that I had. So if I had two interviews scheduled one day, I needed a separate permission for each one of them. And that's just unreasonable, especially when the content's going to be relatively the same. I'm not speaking at a turn or revealing state secrets. It's just a way to sort of silence anybody. We'll be right back with more of the Will Kane podcast. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason and the House

podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with remarkable guests listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts fox news audio presents unsolved with james patterson every crime tells a story but some stories are left unfinished somebody knows real cases real people listen and follow now at fox true crime dot com so let's now um i appreciate you addressing that that criticism i think it's important for your own credibility to be able to address those that make these arguments against you.

I said I would return to this. You know, you've begun to touch on it. How did the FBI, in your estimation, then go from targeting communists in the 1960s to whenever this transition occurred, and I'd love for us for you to lay out your theory on when it occurred, focusing on essentially those on the right.

How did domestic terrorism, when did domestic terrorism become parents showing up school board meetings, January 6th, all of these different categorizations now of what amounts to, I think the FBI describes as the greatest threat to America. I think that now they say domestic terrorism is the number one threat to America. Yes, they are arguing that, and they actually get more specific, and they identify their top priorities, and two of their top four priorities are anti-government extremism and radical ethnic extremism, which parenthetically means white supremacy. And that's no coincidence that that's what President Biden labeled

the MAGA Republicans or even just general Republican voter when he did his address in front of Independence Hall last September. I think that the history of this mission creep that started after September 11th, you had your Patriot Act, you had a tremendous amount of funds that were thrown to the FBI. You had President George W. Bush pushing the FBI to become more of an intelligence organization as opposed to a law enforcement organization. And that sets itself up for when it's combined with this metric system with for a disaster, where it's not in keeping with our tradition of law enforcement. Anytime you have intelligence mixed with law enforcement, that's very Stasi, that's very

KGB. There used to be that wall between the two. And you look to no other example than the UK, where they have MI5, which is domestic intelligence. And we can debate whether or not they should be having domestic intelligence to that point. But all that MI5 can do is make recommendations to Scotland Yard for prosecution. It's if they're independent of each other. But now that you've combined the two, and the mission creep came home, the military did a great job of stomping out al-Qaeda and all these foreign actors that were going to bring home threats to us, started to look internally, and that was homegrown violent extremism.

Those were people who were newly immigrated to the United States or maybe first generation American, but still might have sympathies or ideology aligned with these foreign actors. the FBI combated that very well. And then we got to justify the stats. We've got to keep the budgets flowing. So what's the next threat? And that threat became domestic terrorism. And that has been sort of evolved into what is problematic for the political class in Washington. When would you say this happened? Like chronologically, what years are we talking about this transition took place? I think you just need to look at the crime statistics. They jumped in 2016, 2017. And I thought that I think that that probably aligns very nicely with the ascendancy of Donald Trump as a president. There was definitely a lot of resistance amongst the headquarters Washington, D.C., FBI agents and employees to him ideologically.

And unfortunately, we're sort of in a situation where there's an irreconcilable difference between two worldviews. And one is very libertine like myself where I can check my political opinions at the door. And I'm going to do my job, Joe Friday, just the facts, and not worry about. that. And then the other worldview is that which is not banned is required, and their politics dictate how they want to do their work. And that tends to be of the political left in this country. And those people also sort of self-select into management and leadership within the FBI and can chart the course of the agency. Real quick. So that's a fascinating timeline, which I suspect is correct. But how do we reconcile

what happened in the 1990s where you had so many of these incidences, whether or not it was Ruby Ridge or Waco or whatever it may be. And then, of course, you had the Oklahoma City bombing. Are those, which would all have been classified, I imagine. I imagine all of those would have been classified as right-wing or anti-government domestic extremism. Does what happened in the 1990s have any relation to this? Because it doesn't fit the chronology of the timeline that you just gave us.

So were those blips on the radar? I think so. I think that the reason that we remember Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing, is because they were so black swan events. And the fact that they were so devastating and memorable to us, it now is being weaponized. That memory is ingrained in your memory and my memory if you grew up in that time period.

And then the government can say now, and the FBI can say now, we could have another Oklahoma City bombing if we don't get billions of dollars to confront this threat. And we're very fortunate in this country that we live in a very safe country for the most part. The demand amongst the leadership and the political class in Washington for domestic terrorism vastly outstripped the supply,

that is a good thing, not a bad thing. And unfortunately, there's pressure to create these cases at a whole cloth, and a lot of Americans are getting caught up in that dragnat. We're going to step aside here for a moment. Stay tuned. I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world.

Listen and follow now at Fox News. That is exactly what I think every single one of us feels intuitively. You said it so well. The demand for domestic terrorism seems to vastly outstrip the supply of domestic terrorism. And then you have the FBI in the position of creating domestic terrorism, whether that's literally creating it in the case we just talked about in Michigan or whether or not that's through statistics increasing the perception of domestic terrorism. And then, but now I want to see if we can nail it on together, the why of that. We've put a couple things on the table, and my suspicion is you're going to tell me it's all of this, Will. But is it, is it the self-licking ice cream cone?

Is it budgetary? Is it apolitical in that it's the place where we can find the justification for the continued growth of the status quo in the FBI? Or is it political? Is it that self-selection of management that you just said, who seems to find itself on the left? Or even more so, is it political because the FBI is under the debate? DOJ, who is under a political party. At the given moment, it is a Democratic Party. But you pointed out earlier that the spike happened during Republican presidency. So what is making the FBI drive deeper into domestic terrorism, which is increasingly pointing at the political right? I think you called

a shot. It's definitely going to be all of them. But I think that it's also with an ebb and flow of what is popular, what the demand is, what people want to see the FBI used for. So when I came into the FBI in 2014 and made me this a conversation for another day, the crime du jour was human trafficking. And I saw manipulations going on or attempts at manipulations going on to generate human trafficking. I worked in an area that was on the state border for three different states. And there was a simple vice complaint where it was a prostitute, her husband was her pimp. And they lived in one state.

They traveled to the other state for her to do her work. And then they would go back. And there was a push for the FBI needs to open the human trafficking. case up because she's crossing state lines. And I think anybody who's reasonable would look at that and say, look, that's a vice complaint. That's prostitution. That's not an FBI matter. That's definitely not human trafficking. But people like to work smarter, not harder. And now that there's an appetite for domestic terrorism for people to be able to stand up at the podium and talk about this tremendous threat and we need to continue to give more funds to the agency, expand the agency. We have a new headquarters

that has to be built. We have, I think Christopher Ray said it was something like 2,700 active domestic terrorism cases. There needs to be an audit of that number. It is my great and sincere belief that that is not a genuine number. That is just statistical manipulation, especially when it comes to January 6 cases, which were a boondoggle for the agency when it came to getting budgets, getting compensation for its managers, and somewhere in the area between $30,000 and $50,000 for individuals,

who then take that paycheck, retire off of it, and it represents their highest. pay. So in perpetuity for the rest of their life, they're getting a percentage of that higher pay. And that's just, that's not what law enforcement is about. There's no incentive structure there. If anything, you know, and you come from a legal background, that's Giglio material. I think that a defense should, as a matter of due process, be able to ask agent friend, isn't it true that you got a wiretap on this case? And when you did, your boss got a $30,000 bonus. I think if that were to come to light in front of a jury, in front of an American jury, somebody like Pablo Escobar could probably walk.

Oh, wow. Because there's so many different corrupt incentives in play to open up, keep open, not just investigations or not just, as you've pointed out, cases, but intelligence operations. Tools. Tools are a part of it. And then even just the work tempo that was to me very disturbing, where it was more advantageous to claiming these accomplishments of the FBI sets for itself. if I were to arrest one guy on Monday, another guy on Tuesday, another guy on Wednesday, as opposed

to all three on Monday. I got three for one that way. And that was allowing people to walk free longer than they needed to. I was actually even encouraged to not indict certain cases for a matter of months because we'd already hit our numbers for the year. And they didn't want those numbers to get bumped up for the next year's expectations. So now you have subjects walking around who could potentially be inflicting fraud and force on innocent people for a matter of months because we want to hit our quarter.

number like we're sales operations. How do you fix all this, Steve? I think that the Republicans are loath to embrace the moniker of being the defund the police party. But I think it needs to be rebranded as empowering local law enforcement. The FBI cannot operate without help and assistance from local partners. And their local detectives with sheriff's offices, police departments, they get deputized as essentially United States Marshals. They become task force officers. And they're the most powerful people in the FBI because they have state arrest authority. and federal arrest authority, I think that you could do away with the FBI and provide funding for these local departments that know where the problems are.

There's a reason the usual suspects is a movie. The locals know the usual suspects. Most crimes are committed by a small circle of people. And if you were to empower these agencies deputize more of their experienced detectives as opposed to getting somebody who went to Quantico for 20 weeks, you get a detective who's been working in that criminal investigative division office for 10 years and say, hey, go out and work your cases. If it's federal, take it to a U.S. attorney. If it's state, take it to the local county prosecutor. And that would be something that the FBI should do. And that's something

that I always look to do. I tried to provide help with my local partners. All the best cases the FBI has come in from the local agencies. The FBI, agents, they're nerds. They sit at their desk in a big office that's walled off and separated from the community. There aren't out there on the drug corner and seeing the buy happen that then worked its way up to bust some giant cartel that starts with a patrolman. And if the Republicans were to say, do divert funds from the FBI and maybe leave them some sort of tactical intelligence, take away all the guns, take away all the enforcement angles, make it MI5 in America,

and we're going to empower our locals to do the work that people signed up to do. Oh, that's so interesting. Okay, I thought we were winding down. We have to pursue this angle for just one moment. So intuitively and philosophically, I like that. I think every, and let's be clear, the FBI is government, obviously. government always works better the more accountable it is to the people, and it's more accountable to the people when it is mostly in close relationship to the people. That's why

a Republican or anybody with a conservative philosophy believes in smaller government at the highest levels. So you empower lowest levels of government because I have the biggest sway over my city council and my school board, not over my governor, and even less over my president. So you're suggesting law enforcement works the same way. You should be worried about your local police department, your local sheriffs, they should be, and they're most effective in dealing with crime. The argument, I think, in response to that, Steve, would be, and you began to address it there at the end, well, look, man, when terrorism came along or whatever, it may be organized crime, you're talking about stuff going across state lines around the nation, you're talking about

big criminal enterprises, and you need communication. That's usually what's cited, the loss of information between even even I'm a big I'm big on serial killers which used to be a big thing for the FBI right I love watching serial killer documentaries and movies and one of the things why serial killers always got away is because local law enforcement didn't communicate with one another and here comes the FBI and it threads all the different it stitches together all the different patchwork of law enforcement so how do you propose to continue to stitch together information whether not that be terrorism organized crime or serial serial killers if we continue, if we go back to decentralizing law enforcement.

I think that's the beauty of the task force in law enforcement, that you bring in parties from multiple agencies that are in generally the same vicinity of each other, and you can have a communications arm. There's these fusion centers that states establish and the localities set up for themselves to share information. It is a different age now than Bonnie and Clyde. It's not hard for me to pick up my cell phone and call somebody in a different state who is a member of a different law enforcement agency or gets me in contact with an intelligence

organization, a fusion center to give me that information. And the beauty of having these deputized task force officers who are U.S. Marshals, they have federal arrest authority. You cross state lines, and they are able to pursue you and apprehend you. So I think that that just needs to be enhanced. It's already, we have a proof positive. We have a beta case, the way that the FBI currently uses task force officers. In my personal office in Daytona, we had a agents. That's for four counties that has four million citizens. It is impossible to police with eight people. So you rely on your local partners and we had task force officers who had relationships back with their own agencies and and we could

work together that way. So I think it's definitely foreseeable and doable and I think that also the one aspect that always often gets overlooked and it's because the FBI has this image as being the federal law enforcement, the premier agency within the country. There's a homeland security, the entire Department of Government, that gets 10 times the funding of the FBI and can certainly have a, and it does have a mandate to carry out national security and defending the homeland against any sort of terrorist threats. So it's not like if the FBI were to snap your fingers and go away tomorrow, I think most Americans would not really have a significant change in their life.

And we had a test of that in 2020 when the FBI essentially shut down during the coronavirus. And your proposal is not that we, not the extinction of the FBI, but you said specifically, take on the role of like an MI5 in England. By the way, so that's a domestic intelligence agency. You even said, you know, unarmed, who communicates to all these task forces, all these marshals, all these local law enforcement information. Would you think that's an appropriate role for the FBI? I mean, I'm trying to think, do we have a domestic intelligence agency?

And I think the NSA, does their charter include domestic intelligence? I think it does. I'm not sure. The CIA certainly does not. So you would encourage the FBI to continue to go down that intelligence direction? If it was going to be tactical intelligence for criminal investigative purposes, I think that there's definitely, and we have those and they're not really abused. And you have your NCIC where, you know, if I were to encounter you on a traffic stop as a police officer,

I could check your name for warrants and warrants. and make sure that you didn't have a suspended driver's license. I think all of those, that's necessary and important information to have. But then you get into the whole 702 renewal, and from my perspective, that needs to be eliminated because that has allowed domestic spying on so many people. And the FBI is abused that with hundreds of thousands of wrongful searches. And it's a tool that is ripe for weaponization. So removing the tools that can be weaponized, remove that temptation.

and you can have a productive intelligence agency because doing law enforcement without any intelligence then puts you back into the Bonnie and Clyde days. What a fascinating conversation. It went deeper down the rabbit hole of how to reform the FBI or law enforcement in general than I anticipated. But, you know, I think what we're dealing with, what we're both acknowledging here is it is partisan. It's clearly, it's clearly the FBI is targeting those on the right who want to disrupt the status quo of continued government metastatization, growth, continued growth. but I think it's not partisan in that the FBI's motivation is to continue to be that self-looking ice cream cone grow, grow, grow, grow, grow budgets, grow justification, grow caseload, just like the

federal government. And it just so happens that one party is the one that helps that to continue. And so how do we fix that? Maybe somewhere of it. Somewhere the answer is in this conversation. Hey, Steve, thank you so much for speaking out for sharing your opinion so truthfully and for doing so here today with me. Thank you, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much. There you go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation.

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