Thibault Is A Little Guy

FBI agent Timothy Thibault was reported late Monday to have been escorted out of his FBI office in Washington Friday afternoon and to have "abruptly resigned". Thibault had been a public target of allegations by Iowa Sen Charles Grassley that FBI agents have shown political bias in their investigations.

"The information provided to my office involves concerns about the FBI's receipt and use of derogatory information relating to Hunter Biden, and the FBI's false portrayal of acquired evidence as disinformation," GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland on July 25. "The volume and consistency of these allegations substantiate their credibility and necessitate this letter."

. . . In October 2020, one month before the election, "an avenue of derogatory Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed" by a senior FBI agent at the bureau's Washington Field office. An earlier letter from Grassley identified the agent as Timothy Thibault.

. . . In that May 31 letter, Grassley also accused Thibault of likely violations of "[f]ederal laws, regulations and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) guidelines."

"Whistleblowers have reported to me, that although the FBI and Justice Department maintain policies dictating specific standards requiring substantial factual predication to initiate an investigation, Thibault and other Justice Department and FBI employees failed to comply with these requirements."

However,

Thibault, a 25-year-veteran, had already been on leave for a month after the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), started raising concerns about whistleblower claims that the FBI had obstructed its own investigations into the first son.

Beyond that, on August 4,

FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday that allegations of an FBI agent’s partisan social media posts and efforts to suppress information in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities were “deeply troubling.”

Speaking at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Wray appeared to condemn the alleged actions of Timothy Thibault, who he said was an FBI assistant special agent in charge at the Washington field office until “relatively recently.”

Well, Director Wray was clearly shocked, shocked to hear of this on August 4. It sounds like he got right on it (cough, cough), notwithstanding Grassley had written him about Thibault and others at least as early as May 31. In fact, it sounds as if the FBI is belatedly covering itself. Here's what sounds like background from them in this Fox report:

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray called the whistleblowers' allegations "deeply troubling." He promised that the whistleblowers would be protected and removed Thibault from his supervisory role.

Thibault was one of 13 assistant special agents in charge at the Washington field office. He was not involved in the FBI raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month at any level.

This raises more questions than it answers. The specific allegations against Thibault go back to October 2020 and the FBI's work to characterize the Hunter Biden laptop story as "Russian disinformation", so Thibault had been up to no good for nearly two years, based only on what's been made public so far. But Wray learned about this only this summer? And Grassley's letters clearly allege that Thibault isn't the only case -- and by the FBI's own account, Thibault was one of 13 assistant special agents in charge at the Washington field office.

Which, by the way, ran the Mar-a-Lago raid. Doesn't this affect the credibility of that raid as well?

The FBI's nine-hour, 30-agent raid of the former president's Florida estate is part of a counterintelligence case run out of Washington – not Miami, as has been widely reported – according to FBI case documents and sources with knowledge of the matter. The bureau's counterintelligence division led the 2016-2017 Russia "collusion" investigation of Trump, codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane."

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit, the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by both Durham and the bureau's disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

In addition, a key member of the Crossfire team – Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten – has continued to be involved in politically sensitive investigations, including the ongoing federal probe of potentially incriminating content found on the abandoned laptop of President Biden's son Hunter Biden, according to recent correspondence between the Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI whistleblowers have alleged that Auten tried to falsely discredit derogatory evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign by labeling it Russian "disinformation," an assessment that caused investigative activity to cease.

. . . Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked Wray for copies of recent case files and reports generated by Auten and whether he is included among the team the FBI has assembled to determine which of the seized Trump records fall within the scope of its counterespionage investigation and which fall outside of it.

. . . "It is a disgrace that Auten is still even employed by the bureau," said 27-year FBI veteran Michael Biasello. "I would substitute other analysts and agents."

So Thibault is only one of several problem agents identified by Sen Grassley and enumerated at the link, including Alan Kohler, the head of the FBI's counterintelligence division, who was also key to the Crossfire Hurricane operation and now supervises the Mar-a-Lago investigation. In addition,

In congressional testimony this month, Wray confirmed that “a number of” former Crossfire Hurricane team members are still employed at the bureau while undergoing disciplinary review. In the meantime, Wray has walled off the former Russiagate investigators only from participating in FISA wiretap applications, according to the sources.

So it sounds as though other FBI agents besides Thibault had stayed with the bureau while undergoing disciplinary review -- and the action taken against Thibault, while belated, should not be the end of the story. We'll have to see what develops. . . .