In an exclusive interview with Insider FBI special agent Johnathan Buma alleges that the bureau was hungry for intelligence on Hunter Biden, but when his sources fingered Rudy Giuliani, he was shut down.
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00:00 I didn't want to be a whistleblower.
00:01 I wanted nothing to do with it.
00:02 I was at my wits end.
00:04 I saw important intelligence reporting being suppressed.
00:07 I started to experience what I believed to be
00:09 discrimination, character assassination, really.
00:12 My name is Jonathan Buma, and I'm a FBI special agent.
00:17 When I went and presented to the assistant director
00:26 in charge over at Los Angeles field office,
00:28 he was very interested in the allegations concerning
00:32 potentially implicating the Bidens
00:35 and involved in business deals with Burisma,
00:38 a company that was involved in alleged criminal activity.
00:43 He's very interested, and he was adamant about
00:46 packaging that information up and transferring that
00:49 to the appropriate case agent right away.
00:51 But during the same meeting,
00:53 when I attempted to provide information
00:58 that Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised
01:02 by individuals suspected of being involved
01:05 in Russian counterintelligence influence operations,
01:08 he shut me down and the meeting ended.
01:10 I came to know that Giuliani had received $300,000
01:15 from Pavlo Fuchs, a very powerful businessman
01:21 who had deep ties with a transnational
01:23 organized crime syndicate.
01:25 He was based in Ukraine.
01:26 And that was deeply concerning to me,
01:28 especially having heard that Giuliani had been
01:34 working for the president pro bono.
01:36 My questions that were going through my head were,
01:39 well, who does he really work for?
01:41 I wasn't trying to implicate Trump or do anything
01:44 that would injure his reputation.
01:48 This reporting implicates Giuliani.
01:50 He was the one that was in ongoing contact
01:54 with foreign nationals and political activists
01:58 that would receive hundreds of thousands of dollars
01:59 from these sources.
02:00 And at that time, Joe Biden was not yet
02:02 the Democratic nominee.
02:04 I said to my co-handling agent, I said to him,
02:09 why do they keep going back to the Bidens?
02:12 So what if this is the leading edge
02:14 of a disinformation campaign to create a theme
02:19 of derogatory information about the Bidens
02:22 in anticipation that Biden would be Trump's
02:26 main political rival?
02:28 And I started to experience pushback.
02:30 All of my reporting came under really tight scrutiny
02:33 to the point where I went from getting
02:38 exceptional performance awards to being told
02:43 that I was an inconsistent performer
02:45 and that I had all these administrative,
02:48 I don't have a history of that, 13 years before that.
02:50 So it got to the point where it was pretty intolerable.
02:52 So I filed a whistleblower complaint.
02:54 All FBI agents get annual training concerning
02:57 the protected federal whistleblower statute,
03:00 which says that if you see misconduct in management,
03:04 then you can file a whistleblower complaint
03:07 with the inspection division.
03:08 The managers involved in your chain of command
03:11 are prohibited from committing any acts
03:15 that could be considered reprisal or retaliation.
03:18 From that point forward, the retaliation actually increased
03:23 and I experienced no such protection.
03:25 And there's never any mention or acknowledgement
03:28 outside of an automated email response
03:30 saying we received your information
03:33 and a letter that said we received your information.
03:35 Nothing, no interviews, no anything.
03:37 And an email was sent with a brand new supervisors
03:40 that specifically prohibited me from doing
03:42 any more reporting on criminal matters,
03:46 public corruption matters, or reporting on anyone
03:48 related to the White House or any current
03:51 or former associates of Trump.
03:53 Now I started to experience personal attacks,
03:56 not only suppression of the reporting.
03:58 My reporting was corroborated already at that point.
04:01 So if you can't undercut the reporting,
04:03 you undercut the person.
04:04 So that's what I was experiencing at that point.
04:06 And I was moved to a squad where I couldn't work sources.
04:10 I was sent to basically the Alaska of LA
04:13 and put into a position where it would be
04:15 physically impossible for me to do
04:18 any more source reporting.
04:20 I was never trying to drive the political process
04:22 in one way or the other.
04:23 I was only trying to make sure that everybody
04:24 had all of the information, both sides,
04:28 so that people could make intelligent decisions
04:31 about what they want to do,
04:33 policy makers or voters or whatever.
04:35 (somber music)
04:44 What Chairman Jordan's investigation is alleging
04:47 is that the FBI as a whole is an arm
04:50 of the anti-Trump agenda.
04:52 And that's simply not true.
04:54 There is this allegation out there
04:58 that the FBI slow played the intake of information
05:02 and their diligent effort to investigate
05:06 Burisma and the Bidens.
05:09 What I saw were going on with some of these hearings
05:14 was they weren't getting the full story.
05:15 And I wrote up a statement, went to his office,
05:20 and I told him, "Quite honestly, guys,
05:23 here's what happened.
05:27 I think the management cared a lot about it
05:31 and they wanted a special briefing about it.
05:33 What needs to be said here is,
05:35 I later started reporting on Giuliani
05:37 and I really started to experience some suppression."
05:42 And at that point, they shut me down and they said,
05:45 "No, no, no, we're only interested
05:48 in things related specifically to Biden.
05:50 I don't think it's a legitimate investigation."
05:53 (somber music)
05:56 The reason why I came forward is,
06:04 number one, I don't want any other FBI agent
06:06 to ever have to go through what I've gone through
06:08 and having their right of protection under the statute
06:11 completely blatantly violated.
06:13 Number two, I wanna restore the integrity of the FBI
06:18 so that people have trust and faith in it.
06:20 Because if it's gone, public corruption will become rampant
06:24 and things will go to hell in a handbasket in this country
06:27 real fast, faster than people think.
06:29 If the very agency that's charged
06:32 with holding our public officials
06:34 and the most powerful people in the world accountable
06:37 can't hold its own self accountable
06:39 and becomes corrupt itself,
06:40 then this country, things can get bad real fast.
06:43 It'd be the beginnings of a fascist state.
06:47 They wanna figuratively slaughter me by firing me,
06:50 they can do that, but I have no intention of leaving.
06:52 I'm gonna show up for work.
06:54 I'm gonna continue to show up for work
06:56 in hope of getting a good paycheck
06:58 like any other American really wants.
06:59 (somber music)
07:03 (gentle music)
07:05 (gentle music)
07:08 (gentle music)
07:11 (gentle music)
07:13 [BLANK_AUDIO]