(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . FBI Whistleblower Alleged Bosses ‘Suppressed’ Trumpworld Probes: Report [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-08-10 Throughout my professional career, I have worked as a record producer helping bands navigate the recording studio process, I have been a restaurant general manager, I have owned a restaurant, I have managed teams of IT people and I have managed the process of onboarding new cloud computing customers. That’s a pretty diverse background of seemingly unrelated industries and skills, but one thing is consistent throughout the almost 40 year evolution of my career. I have always been in some form of leadership role and I have had many good and bad leaders above me. I often say I can step into a restaurant and tell the quality of the manager in 5 minutes without ever having to see her or him. I can do that because the quality of the manager always rubs off on the people around them. Is the restaurant spotless or is it a mess? Are the staff pleasant or hostile to each other and customers? How quick is the service? I see this happen in the corporate world all the time as well. Over almost 15 years that I have been in my current role I have worked with 500+ businesses helping them to transition their IT infrastructure to “the cloud.” I get to witness all kinds of good and not-so-good managers leading these firms. My nose can sniff out a good IT team from a troubled one in the first few minutes of the very first meeting. All of these things are a direct reflection of leadership, they start at the top and work their way down to the lowest levels of any organization. Also, in my experience it doesn’t take long to change the attitude and mindset of a whole organization. I have seen new leadership at the top of a company completely transform a bad team into a highly motivated and efficient group in a year or so. Of course, we have all watched Elon Musk destroy the motivation of Twitter’s workforce in that same brief period of time. Why am I saying all of this? Well, I am REALLY surprised I haven’t seen much reporting on this story. The current news cycle is like a fire hose but this should be a really big deal that isn’t getting much coverage. A counterintelligence agent in the FBI prepared a 22-page statement in preparation for a whistleblower meeting with the Senate Judiciary Committee. That document was leaked recently and in that statement, he alleges that: … his supervisors interfered in his work in “a highly suspicious suppression of investigations and intelligence-gathering” that aimed to protect “certain politically active figures,” including “anyone in the [Trump] White House and any former or current associates of President Trump.” You may be thinking, “that’s no surprise under the Barr DOJ, what’s the story here?” Well….. … the agent said he was ordered to stop looking into Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies in an Aug. 2022 meeting that he characterized as the culmination of years of upper-level efforts to frustrate his work. Meaning it appears that this started under Barr but was still the directive of the FBI well into Garland’s tenure. Now let me go back to my opening where I talked about leadership. IF the whistleblower’s allegations are correct, and I will point out they match previous reporting and what we all witnessed with the lack of movement on many fronts until Jack Smith was appointed, I can only see two scenarios here. Either: 1. Merrick Garland isn’t providing leadership and isn’t pressuring FBI Sr. managers to follow the rule of law OR 2. Merrick Garland is providing leadership and FBI supervisors were directed by Sr. DOJ officials to suppress investigations and intelligence-gathering of anyone in the Trump White House and any former or current associates of President Trump. Neither of these are good for the rule of law or our nation. According to the Washington Post: Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found. When this reporting was made public many on the left, including a number of DK members, said they didn’t believe it. Now we have a whistleblower preparing to testify in the Senate about this exact experience. I just want to put this out there…. I AM NOT ATTACKING Garland because I dislike the man, in fact I am NOT attacking Garland at all. I think he is an honorable person working in a high-pressure environment. What I am doing is demanding that our public officials get better. I believe it’s our responsibility as citizens to hold our public officials accountable. It would be very easy to roll into a political shell like an armadillo; picking a side and sticking with it is very tempting. I get that Garland was appointed to two very prestigious roles (Supreme Court Justice and Attorney General) by Obama and Biden, two men I admire GREATLY. I understand how some on the left see the need to defend Garland at all costs, but that’s not how we make our government better. We can’t look the other way when it’s “our people” and then expect “their people” to do the right thing. We also need to avoid confirmation bias. Only seeking out information that confirms your beliefs and ignoring or discredit information that doesn't support them. Looking for evidence that confirms what you already think is true, rather than considering all of the evidence available. All of that said, I am seriously troubled by what’s going on at the FBI and the DOJ. I think everyone can agree that Garland’s whole mode of thinking revolves around customs and norms. In a nutshell that means “doing things the way we have always done them” and I just want to remind everyone that the FBI and DOJ have a long, long track record of doing things many of us don’t agree with. I want the DOJ to get better and getting better is directly at odds with ‘doing things the way we have always done them.” We need the justice system to get better and the ONLY way that will happen is if we put public pressure on the DOJ leadership because, as I started out saying at the top of this diary, leadership flows out to the rest of the organization. I am not calling for Garland to be fired, that would cause much confusion and only distract from Trump’s court cases. But: - I am calling on him to fire Christopher Wray and to open a deep internal investigation of the allegations presented by the whistleblower above. If FBI officials are found to have been shielding criminal activities by Trump and his advisers, these officials should be fired and prosecuted themselves. - I am calling on him to open an investigation into William Barr’s complicity in Trump’s criminal activities (as a reminder, Nixon’s AG John Mitchell served time after Watergate so an investigation into Barr isn’t without precedence). - In the interest of national security I am calling on him seriously and aggressively investigate connections between foreign entities (Russia and Saudi Arabia come to mind specifically) and the Republican party. - I am calling on him to include the largest C-Suite executives during his stated commitment to prosecuting white-collar crime nationwide. - I am calling on him to continue oping investigations of police misconduct and brutality against POC (in fairness, the DOJ has been doing a sort of good job in this area but they could always improve). - I am calling on him open investigations concerning the treatment of immigrants at the Southern border, including the actions of DeSantis, Abbott and the US Border Patrol and to bring criminal charges if the evidence supports such an action. - If the whistleblower allegations are true, I am calling on him to open an internal investigation of the Matt Gaetz probe to determine if pressure was put on line-level prosecutors by FBI supervisors to drop the case. And if this turns out to be what happened, I am calling on him to reopen the case against Gaetz as well. - I am calling on him to stop thinking of only rules and norms and to realize the DOJ needs to be shaken up. He must understand that public trust in the institution will not increase if lawlessness is ignored or swept under the rug. I suspect almost everyone on the left would agree that these are important issues that deserve attention and they will only get attention through public pressure. Leadership matters, it flows from the top down and only Merric Garland can change the attitude and mindset of the nation’s law enforcement community, I am calling on him to do so. Here is a link to The Daily Beast article if you would like to read more. 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