Rep. Matt Gaetz grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray in a letter over claims made by a whistleblower involving certain bureau personnel.
The Florida Republican said that, according to an insider, several FBI agents who knelt down in a sort of surrender to many of the violent BLM mobs in woke fashion during the summer riots of 2020 following the George Floyd murder were given “plum” work assignments.
On June 4, 2020, during a demonstration in Washington, D.C., numerous FBI officers were captured in photographs kneeling as a symbolic gesture. The protests that unfolded throughout the summer of 2020 frequently escalated into violent riots nationwide, Fox News reported.
He said in the letter that certain agents who knelt during the demonstration received commendations from the executive management of the FBI. The Florida congressman raised questions regarding whether their show of support for the demonstrators played a role in their career advancement.
“Many FBI personnel we were trusting to be on the front lines were photographed kneeling in surrender to people who at times were violent,” Gaetz told Fox News Digital in an interview. He added that one of the FBI personnel who knelt appears to be Washington field office assistant special agent in charge Sarah Linden.
He said a whistleblower and other information informed him that “people were rewarded for this at [the] FBI with plum personnel opportunities and promotions and advancements.”
“To climb the ladder in federal employment, you shouldn’t have to shimmy up the woke totem pole,” Gaetz added, asking the director “about how various personnel engaged in these acts of supplication were then given plum professional opportunities.”
Gaetz added that the “FBI’s behavior is demoralizing” to law enforcement at all levels, local and federal, and that “it showcases a real misunderstanding of the purpose of law enforcement.”
“The purpose of law enforcement is to keep people safe, not to engage in politics,” Gaetz said. “And for the last several years, we’ve seen the FBI more interested in virtue signaling and political activity than in just the nuts and bolts in evaluating the facts and the law.”
“And Sarah Linden, we understand, now is leading the criminal division of the Washington field office,” the GOP lawmaker said. “And if that’s the case, we want to know that that was a decision based on merit, not a decision solely as a consequence of a political performance.”
“We have reason to believe that’s who it is, and that’s what we are seeking to confirm,” Gaetz said.
In his letter, Gaetz cited the 2020 “coordinated” summer riots that caused “millions of dollars in property damage” as well as the May 29, 2020, incident where “violent protestors threw rocks, urine, and alcohol at United States Secret Service Agents, injuring over 60 of them.”
“Some protestors also scaled the barriers to the White House and Department of the Treasury complex,” Gaetz wrote.