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]
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