The FBI’s bombshell report exposes its rotten, weaponized core

For anyone still wondering why five armed FBI agents arrested me at Reagan National Airport for a misdemeanor, the newly revealed FBI “After Action” report on January 6 provides all you need to know.

Kash Patel, the new FBI director, has released this bombshell report, and it confirms is not just bureaucratic bungling, but a partisan, weaponized FBI.

The report reveals that more than 200 FBI agents were deployed into the January 6 riot — without adequate training, equipment, or protection — turning the bureau’s own rank-and-file into political props. At the same time, this same FBI was aggressively targeting President Trump and his advisors while offering political cover to the left. 

I lived this targeting firsthand. My ambush at the airport was meant to humiliate and intimidate me, not to serve any law enforcement purpose. It was about sending a political message. And the targeting of myself was not isolated but rather fits a disturbing pattern that stretches across years to the very dawn of the Trump 2016 campaign.

The first piece in this puzzle is the hoax Russia-collusion investigation, manufactured by FBI and Justice Department personnel, with an assist from abuses of the intelligence apparatus. This was intended to cripple a nascent presidency by using the false, Clinton-funded Steele dossier to justify FISA warrants and investigations. 

Around the same time that began, General Mike Flynn was ambushed and entrapped in a phony perjury scheme. 

There was also the unlawful surveillance of Carter Page, based on a dossier the FBI knew was unverified and sustained through a falsified FISA warrant application. 

Later came the pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone’s home, with CNN cameras coincidentally already on the scene and rolling as agents in combat gear pulled him out of bed. Also, there was the aggressive seizure of John Eastman’s phone and search of Jeffrey Clark’s home under federal warrants. 

And then there was the FBI’s own raid on Mar-a-Lago, where agents rifled through the private quarters of a former president and even his wife’s closet. 

The FBI’s own employees have by now admitted the hypocrisy. One agent wrote in the after action report that although the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot had been “despicable,” what was worse was “the hypocrisy displayed by the FBI and its leadership ... while we as agents, watched cities burn across America during the summer of 2020.” 

As another agent posed the question, where was that same “whole office response” to hunt down Antifa and BLM rioters who torched buildings and assaulted officers? That disparity is the very definition of weaponized partisanship in enforcement of the law.

The after action report also shows a woke FBI, more concerned with politics and optics than mission. One agent blasted leadership for doing “a poor job of following the Constitution, obeying the rule of law and protecting Americans from force and fraud.” Another concluded that the bureau had become “the enforcement arm of the Democrat Party/Deep State.”

The report also records complaints that a woke Washington FBI headquarters prioritized “mask requirements” and “recruiting preferred racial-sexual groups” over catching real criminals. One agent recommended the FBI “make clear to its personnel and the public that, despite its obvious political bias, it ultimately still takes its mission seriously.”

The internal comments likewise reveal a demoralized FBI workforce. One agent admitted he was ready to resign rather than “work for an organization whose ethics and integrity are this maligned.” Another predicted the FBI's bias could fuel “civil unrest by conscientious citizens … who fear the loss of the Republic.” 

When your own agents fear their leadership is destroying public trust, you don’t have a law enforcement agency anymore — you have a political enforcement arm. 

The list of people who need to be investigated for their roles in weaponizing the FBI and Justice Department is long.  Newly released internal FBI emails obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) shows agents actually celebrating the decision to indict me for an alleged crime with which no senior White House advisor had ever been charged before. In one exchange, former FBI official Timothy Thibault emailed to colleagues, "Wow! Great!" upon hearing the news.

Grassley’s disclosures further identify FBI officials Walter Giardina, Blaire Toleman, and Thibault as having participated not only in my case but also in such high-profile, anti-Trump weaponized operations as Arctic Frost and Crossfire Hurricane.

The names implicated read like a who’s who of the Russia hoax apparatus. It’s not just James Comey. It’s John Brennan, James Clapper, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Adam Schiff, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rod Rosenstein, and more. Some directly operated FISA processes or intelligence briefings; others shaped the narrative and provided political cover.

The list is long, and the accountability must be real. As I said the very day I got out of prison, in my speech before the Republican National Convention in July 2024, “If we don’t hold them accountable, they will do it again.” 

If we don't hold them accountable, there will be more hoax investigations, more phony impeachments, more unlawful subpoenas, more staggering legal bills for targets like Trump and myself — and, yes, possibly more prison time for people simply doing their jobs and their duty.   

We have seen the enemy, and no, it is not us Republicans. It is the systemic Democratic lawfare now further illuminated by the words of FBI agents themselves.

Peter Navarro is White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing and author of “I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To: A Love and Lawfare Story in Trump Land.”