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Following the controversial raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home back in August, the FBI has taken another hit.
A former FBI agent pleaded guilty late last year to allegations that he destroyed evidence to frame a pro-Trump state lawmaker in Arkansas. The guilty plea was part of a bargain between prosecutors and the former agent Robert Cessario, who was charged with “corrupt destruction of record in an official proceeding” in connection to the corruption trial of former state Sen. Jon Woods of Springdale.
A federal judge sentenced Cessario to three years of probation for destroying evidence in the corruption case that sent three men to federal prison.
“Cessario must spend the first six months of probation in home detention, although no electronic monitoring will be required, according to U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes. Holmes also ordered Cessario to pay a $25,000 fine. Cessario’s presentencing report says federal guidelines would require at least five months in prison. The crime Cessario admitted to — corrupt destruction of an object in an official proceeding — carries a minimum recommended sentence of 10 months in prison,” Arkansas Online reported.
“The sentence can be mitigated by cooperation, according to federal guidelines. The federal sentencing report notes Cessario acknowledged his crime, accepted a plea, and has no prior criminal history. He served in the FBI for 17 years, according to statements by Alan Jackson, the government’s attorney in the case. Defense attorney John Everett of Farmington told Holmes that Cessario’s conviction renders his client unemployable in any kind of law enforcement or security capacity,” the outlet added.
Then-state Sen. Woods endorsed Trump in 2016, reports noted.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan made a stunning admission about the FBI this week, claiming that “dozens” of agents and staffers have come forward to blow the whistle on agency wrongdoing.
The committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held its first hearing on Thursday, and it included tips from those agents as well as testimony from two former agents who exposed politicization within the upper ranks of the bureau, the Daily Caller reported.
“The two former agents, Thomas Baker and Nicole Parker, spoke on their experiences while working at the FBI. Parker said that she is enduring the stress of ‘putting a target’ on her back and testifying to speak on behalf of ‘numerous current and former bureau employees who feel similarly that they do not have a voice,'” the outlet’s report noted, quoting the former agent.
Jordan, an Ohio Republican, opened the hearing with an overview of FBI whistleblowers, which he said amounts to “dozens and dozens” of individuals.
“In my time in Congress, I have never seen anything like this,” Jordan said. “It’s not Jim Jordan saying this, not Republicans, not conservatives, good FBI agents who are willing to come forward and give us the truth.”
The Daily Caller noted further:
Jordan sampled a handful of these tips, spanning back to Nov. 18, 2021, when an FBI whistleblower alerted House Judiciary Republicans that the FBI had created a threat tag for parents expressing concern at school board meetings, and ranging to Nov. 4, 2022, when a whistleblower revealed the FBI accepts private user information from Facebook without user consent, according to a House Judiciary report.
Johnson said at the hearing that he expects many of the whistleblowers will sit for transcribed interviews or testify during future open hearings.
“Every day, I woke up and I embraced being an FBI special agent until things changed,” Parker testified during the hearing, noting further that throughout her dozen years with the agency, it “transformed” and its principles “shifted dramatically.”
“The FBI became politically weaponized starting from the top in Washington and trickling down to the field offices,” Parker testified.
“It’s as if there became two FBIs,” she noted further. “Americans see this, and it is destroying the bureau’s credibility, and therefore the hardworking and highly ethical agents who still do the heavy lifting and pursue noble cases.”
Baker, an agent of 33 years, meanwhile, said that the American public losing faith in the FBI “breaks my heart,” adding that the culture shift within the bureau was “deliberate” and put in place by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
“The FBI director set out deliberately to change the culture of the FBI from a law enforcement agency to an intelligence-driven agency,” he said.
“The FBI, by urging Twitter to censor speech, which it could not itself do, was engaging in a perversion – a perversion of the First Amendment,” Baker later continued. “For most of FBI history, agents were trained as part of the FBI’s mission was to be a guarantor of the Bill of Rights. That has been turned on its head.”
The FBI’s involvement with the social media platform was exposed in dumps of internal communications dubbed the “Twitter Files” beginning after Elon Musk took over as CEO. In December, the FBI issued a statement pushing back on the accusations, which itself drew condemnation.
“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency,” the FBI said to Fox News.
