More Scandals Envelop the Scandalous FBI

For years, congressional Republicans promised to hold FBI officials culpable for various scandals but failed to act.

“You’re in big fucking trouble.”

So said an FBI agent to Julian Khater, one of two men accused of assaulting Capitol police officers with pepper spray on January 6, during a tense interrogation last year. Desperate to sustain the falsehood that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by Trump supporters during the Capitol protest, the FBI claimed to possess video footage that showed Khater and his friend, George Tanios, attacking Sicknick and other officers with chemical spray. Khater was arrested on an airplane at the Newark airport on March 14, 2021 after he arrived home from a trip to Florida.

For more than two hours—shackled to a metal bar in a freezing room at the New Jersey FBI field office—Khater, who has no criminal record, was interrogated without a lawyer present. FBI Special Agent Riley Palmertree refused to tell Khater why he was under arrest until he agreed to proceed without counsel in the room, which Khater reluctantly did. Recently released video confirms Khater initially told the agents he “would feel more comfortable if I had a lawyer” answering questions on his behalf. An hour later, Khater again said he wanted his lawyer.

But Palmertree pushed back, presenting videos and photos implicating Khater in the alleged assault. Palmertree assured Khater that by admitting he sprayed Sicknick with pepper spray rather than a can of bear spray—an item Palmertree later testified was not used that day—a judge would go easy on him. Khater signed a statement confessing that he attacked officers with pepper spray.

Khater has been in jail ever since, housed in the D.C. gulag specifically used to detain January 6 protesters; his trial is scheduled for June 6.

But Khater’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, is now asking the court to toss the interrogation as evidence, arguing that the FBI used “coercion and deception” to force Khater into waiving his Miranda rights. Further, Tacopina wrote in a February 22 motion that Palmertree lied in his FBI report by claiming he advised Khater about the “nature of the interview” before asking Khater to waive his rights.

Khater’s unconstitutional confession is just the latest example of how this rogue agency filled with dirty cops operates with impunity. In just the past several weeks, a number of new FBI scandals have emerged.

A 2019 internal audit of the FBI detected hundreds of violations related to “sensitive investigative matters,” which are investigations into elected officials, candidates, or political organizations. A review of 353 sensitive cases uncovered 747 violations. “A majority of the cases studied, 191, involved domestic public officials,” the Washington Times reported this month. “Dozens of cases involved religious organizations or their prominent members, and dozens of cases involved domestic political organizations and individuals. Ten cases involved domestic political candidates, and 11 cases involved news media.” Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said on Twitter that he and Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) are “demanding answers +inspector general investigation CANT [sic] TOLERATE ‘mistakes’ of FBI trampling constitutional rights.”

Bryan Vorndran, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, told the House Judiciary Committee this week that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of Hunter Biden’s laptop, a device the agency seized in December 2019. Under questioning by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Vorndran repeatedly evaded questions as to whether the department has investigated the contents of the computer to determine if the Biden family is...

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