We were fighting a war against evil, big fan of your work, mate house Sarah, I can't thank you enough for speaking out. FBI whistleblower who helped expose government censorship. Well, hello, my friends. Welcome to the double shot. We're doing from Shot Show. Yeah. We've been having a shit show this morning. I'm sorry to start off with that but that's what it's been. We have been going since about five a.m. local time which is
been pretty nuts. Landed last night went straight in and you can see on joined by Joe Altman. Who's going to be co-hosting with me today? Say hi Joe. Hi Joe. Hi Joe indeed, folks gonna have a lot of fun. We're bringing on an FBI whistleblower. Who I think you guys are gonna really enjoy the story. He's also a Firearms manufacturer owner. So that's pretty cool too. And his name is Zach schoffstall. Hopefully I got the name correctly. We've been working on a show.
Stop gosh, darn it. I knew I was gonna do that. It's we were basically retarded at this point we're gonna have a lot of fun. Now, let's go ahead and get started with a sponsor reads. And this is what we're all about here, getting it done. And also you guys might want to take control of your own health. So go ahead and roll that for me. We got Apollo working in the studio and let's put it up there so it's TWC DOT health, slash Kyle, you might be worried about a globalist pandemic, scare, it
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You can prepare and set of repair head to TWC Health. Slash Kyle again, t w, c DOT health, slash Kyle, the promo code, k, y l. E will say 32 bucks on that one. It'll save you percentage on all the others. If you're so interested. You guys ready? Let's get into it. And here we go. Here we go. Look at this guy. Zach, how tall are you honestly? 511, he's five eleven, and that tells you that I'm actually five foot two that showing on a
block. He's standing on a block and Joe is 5.7 and a half random midgets in here. Absolutely ridiculous. Okay. My fighting stance, get down to your guys level. Yeah, I like that. Like you're like about ready to go and send some like rear kicks into the gut. Yep. Let's talk about you or an FBI agent for how long. 16 years, okay? What made you want to be an FBI agent? So, interesting story. You know, like all of us, trying to figure out what I was going to do in life at a high school.
I actually went to a trade school first, and a two associate degrees. One was an engineering one was in machine Manufacturing. Ultimately took those credits and went on and went back to Montana State, it was pursuing a Bachelors in mechanical engineering. So thank thermodynamics. Thanks a materials differentials. He's forgot. I've been there life sucked. Yeah, it's not fun. No. So price is a conscious. What am I doing with my life and went home?
One day and made a list number one on race car driver. Who wouldn't want that, right? Number two was FBI agent. Okay, so how did you, wait, how do you put those two together? Mmm, no direct connection other than I wanted a job that was more than a paycheck. I wanted a job that was going to be fulfilling rewarding and it seemed like a Life Adventure. So, you know, I think after FBI agent was CIA. And then, I don't really, I was, so the first two show, they
checked together. I mean, I race car driver FBI agent and no Kyle, it works CIA agent, doesn't work. Well, I mean, listen, when you're a college kid, you don't know, like, you know, just throwing stuff on paper. So that's ultimately what set my sights on that. I call the recruiter, I think maybe in the Denver division because I was back in Montana at the time and I said, hey I think I'd like to be a special agent. What does it take? She's like, well, bachelor's degree a three years.
Professional work, experience B. He said, okay, well, I'm in college. What is professional? Work experience? She said not flipping burgers. So, okay, great, that's not true anymore. I don't think well, that that is true standards have dropped standards have definitely dropped. But anyway, I was like, okay, well how about the military? It's like great. We hire folks from military all the time and I don't know, right then and there I kind of
formulated a plan. So I hung up with them, went back to the college and interviewed with army and Air Force RTC. This is pretty 9/11, and the army guys were like, yeah, we found Engineers like, I mean, the dude's a clear. Minefields like, yeah, ask, what down the Air Force, guys? And like, yeah, we've got you want to go pilot or we've got Air Force. I was at military, and so like, what do you want to do? Like, well, I like options. I don't want to be a pilot.
I don't want to do a 10-year commitment. Yeah. So anyway long short of it. I changed my degree to political science, get my GPA is high as I can get it and went in. They sucked me from military
intelligence. And I did, you know, I commissioned in 04 and I did 04 through 08, you know, four different Employments. Last one was to Iraq for seven months with Tesla's Troy, he encounter ID work and you know, when I was eligible, I applied for the bureau looked about a year and a half to get through between deployments. When Quantico and then went to Richmond division, what was your Quantico experience? Like, were you impressed based
on coming out of the Air Force? What I was impressed with was my peer group, like you're sitting there in that room of 50 for the first time and everybody kind of goes through what they've been doing in life. Yeah. And we were the stereotypical stereotypical class where I think, you know, the average age was 31 and it was, you know, Army Ranger, you know, Oda right, nurse. small business owner, you know, maybe swallows a couple Intel guys Just an impressive group like focused handful.
We had a girl great. She'd been a prosecutor and Atlanta like County prosecutor. Definitely not the majority I think only a couple of the 50 words attorneys, right. Quite a bit of military folks in the group. So that was impressive instruction was a bit of a mixed bag from the instructor standpoint. we had a class supervisor, who was a Stream douche canoe. Nice. You want to put his name out there? Uh know I try to avoid like
doing hard rain dropping. You know, when I do interviews this is like I'm not looking the same folks per se. My classmates know who he is. He was Infamous, he was Infamous for sending out an email after I graduated where he was calling out a VMI graduate for being an FNG and calling him by his first name in an email. After he graduated, and was now a special agent. I called a dad by his first name in an email, right? They all have one.
Yeah, I also had somebody come up and said, you know, that there's going to be this person. He's a dad. He's going to be here. I was doing like a meet and greet or a show and tell. And I was like, that's amazing. We're gonna get along great. I'm also with EAD, I've got three little, you know, three little kids. This is going to be cool and they gave me a look like I had something growing out of my forehead.
Yeah, people don't really understand that if they haven't been in the bureau, but there is kind of a Speak until spoken to a little bit, you just came out the door, you know. Shut. Your mouth, even though you're in your 30s, probably, or you're in your late 20s, they don't think you're a real person until you've been there long enough to count or something to that effect. Yeah, there's definitely that hierarchy. I mean, having gone back to internet instructor at the at
the Academy myself. I mean there is that good is that a good thing? I think it's a mixed bag, it's like the people in the bureau. There's some phenomenal people that work in the bureau. I mean we were attracted to the Bureau for the reason of like that from the outside looking in the agency looks exceptional. And there is some exceptional aspects of the FBI. but as a cross-section of society, It's got some turds. Hmm right? What percentage of tears? Are mmm.
All right, so at the Academy I would say, you know, let's look at like the heroes and heroes like a bell curve. So like you got a When I came through, it was a class of 50 when I went back as an instructor. You know it was classes of You know, sections of 250 and then broken into subclasses. It was a bit different, probably
like when you went through. But anyway, let's look at a group of 50 as a bill curve, you know, of that 50, you know, you're going to have maybe five that are heroes like they're great. They're phenomenal, human beings, a phenomenal Americans and they need a little FBI pixie dust and they're going to go out. They're gonna do great things for America, but they're gonna do phenomenal criminal in our security investigations. They're going to be on SWAT teams or Christ, negotiators or
whatever. The other side of the bell curve. You've got maybe five or three zeros or seven. Sure. I mean, it's got a very little by class but they're there, right? If the bell curve is real and you see that when you're in there as a classmate, you know, the ones are in your class that you don't want to be anywhere near. They want the firing line, right? And you want to run from the Firearms room, when everybody gets handed their gun for the first time. So I have, I mean, that's a
pretty big number right? Having six, seven, eight people in a room that I mean, how many times do they cycle through FBI agents classes? Is it once a year twice a year three times. Well, I went through, it was 800 850 students a year and it was a class of 50, every two weeks. When I went back as an instructor, it was 250 students roughly to 225 to 250 starting on the quarters. What's the washer? Whoa, so here's another one. So when I came through in 2008 The only thing you would fail
out for was either academics. So you had three legal tests and a couple of others, you had a test for interview interrogation. It was all book work tests and it was a you had a pass by an 80%. If you didn't pass an exam, you had to retake that Within Short time period, maybe 48 hours or something like that so that you are still with your class and if you fail it, again your toast, the only other thing you would fail out for was for firearms.
And if you fail to pass qualifications with your class, they would roll you into a program where we were shooting 40 caliber Glocks at the time clock 22s. They would put you into a Glock, 19 9mm and you would do a two-week intensifier program. Phenomenal instruction, and it would take a poor shooter and make them a decent shooter, right? And then, if they could pass
with the next class. So again, it's every two weeks, if they get past the next class and they would fold into that class and they would go, there was the fit test, which had a pretty when I went through. At a fairly low failure, I took the back. The first fit test has a high feel right. When I went through, then you took it again and had a pretty low fell, right?
So, there was a little bit of A deck seems stacked kind of impression here, like they want a bunch of us to fail, so they kind of come down on us for something. But ultimately, so the class of 50 I think we lost seven or eight. Okay, dude, academic failures, roll backs for firearms and I think we had well we had one girl that got picked up on a DUI the first weekend. So he got toasted. Yeah. And then Yeah. So, I mean, you're Awesome.
Maybe maybe 10% ish where where in the FBI did people learn to do? Backflips from the gun come out to actually use one of my students he was and he was A great guy, he's a solid guy, but and this is going back to your comment about, like, kind of the arrogance. That's kind of in the bureau and how I tried to handle that as an instructor. He was, I wouldn't say he was like in Hero version on the Belt curve, but he was definitely well in like the top 80% of the Belk review, smart is athletic.
He could shoot, he could process things. Well and Hogan's alley, which I taught But he was there again, very weird. I know that wasn't the first backflip that he's ever done in front of people at a club. I saw it. I saw him do backflips with decades so I had heard about that video. Didn't know who it was and the first version of video I saw was
it a little bit of a distance. And I saw him setting up for the backflip, and then exactly who it was, because I'd seen that more like back handstand or something, right? Yeah, like Flip Flip. That's not the problem. That I had even the gun falling out of his walking away. He was walking away and shooting somebody. That's. Yeah. I mean, poor Trigger Discipline. Yeah, you know, control on his computer, right? I mean, just froze. It, he went he was brain housing group froze.
Yep. I mean, that is a legitimate, you're done in the bureau moment. It is not even instantly though. They trust that day. They tried to save him today. Um, it's unfortunate because he was a good Agent, he would have gone on to do, good cases. Yeah, but so going back to your comment about, like, kind of the arrogance and, and The good and the bad of it in the bureau. So when you come through the academy and you kind of have that moment for me in the class it was humbling of like man.
There's some there's some amazing Americans in this group. I'm not sure how I slipped through the cracks. But then you realize that that's actually not the problem, it's not the problem but you also see you get to, you know, you get to experience. So many instructors are very humble folks, men and women of great and then you've got the other end like our class supervisor Mr. Douche canoe. Extremely arrogant. Yeah. So When I was an instructor going through, I would see the
kids. See the young men and women right in their late 20s and stuff. They were coming through with that Eric's Edge. Part of it. I feel like though is the academy culture where they're constantly telling you like, they were a 10,000 people for this seat and you got it and nobody else could have accept you. And then you walk out there and you're like ah unless you're old enough to go like you're fluffing me because you're
actually praising yourself. I mean no one can build a self looking ice cream cone like the bureau can How many times did you hear that? It was the best job in the world, I mean a lot. But I mean how many times has the FBI say we're the premier law enforcement organization, constantly? I mean, but maybe we are, maybe we are. What's the litmus test for that? Well, the question I always had was this, how many Premier agencies, have you ever worked with or how many really Elite
operators? Have you seen that tell themself they're Elite over and over again? Sure. Because it's not that common. It turns out you don't need to when you have that, no, you don't. So going back to the arrogance issue. I would try to address that head on with the class and say, listen, you know, they're getting close to graduation and say, all right, you guys are gonna walk across the same, same stage that I walked across. You're going to get same credentials that I got.
Doesn't make me anything. Yeah, but like me as soon as you leave the academy, as soon as you show up on, somebody's doorstep your first week and you, you know, open those credentials up and show it to somebody. You're gonna have an instant amount of recognition and some version of credibility that has nothing to do with you.
They don't care what you did before the bureau that they don't care that you survived quote unquote, a 20 week Academy, it has everything to do with 100 Years of other folks showing up and, like, putting bad guys in prison. So check that ego at the door. And for the rest of your career because somebody has done it better than you has done, it longer than you has done more than you.
Settlement and especially if you end up going up in the ranks in the bureau, you know, everybody came through the door the same way just because you become an Sac or this, that doesn't make you a better agent. So remember that as you go through the bureau, when did the Dei become the thing that you hear about this kind of degradation of the FBI? Sure. And I have a friend that that
retired from the FBI. Probably, when you were just getting into the FBI and, and he said, it's just not, it's a, it's a shell of its former self. So, when did that become? When, when did the ethics of the FBI start your role were, you could notice it where you notice that you were at the decisions that you were that people were asking you or the things that people are asking you to do, you had to make a decision on whether or not this was ethical or not. That was always that way. Or is it?
Just did it turn into that way? Again, I think it's a it's a the bureau's cut of our culture. So I went through in 2008. And there were females on my group. There were males and females that I've put into this Euro category of the bell curve. Up. Do they get promoted? I guess some of us some of them are still in the bureau, all right? But as a as an example, I'll give you I'll give you a quick story. So I'm in the academy.
Chill Hall, one morning. So Saturday and by myself And I have this young lady who's in my class who sits down across from me. And I do my darndest to avoid eye contact, but she walked me anyway. and she says, exact you run like longer a lot, right? Yes, I do. Where is this going? She's like, so I Ran like longer the other day. Do the surveillance deer follow you too. Oh my gosh, I'm locked in now that I'm in it. Like, we got it.
We have to actually set the expectation for people to understand that every FBI training thinks that they're that they're being observed at all times. That's what they're told you're constantly on a job interview and so some people let it go to their head where they think ninjas are falling out of the sky or the ceiling anywhere that they are things in the trees that are following them. Because at any moment, you might let your guard down and they will prove that you are not worthy.
I've never heard of that. I mean, I've heard the rumors that people talking about the surveillance here. This is someone actually had this conversation with you was wild. So, uh, for those that have never been to Quantico on the Marine Corps base before, there are deer everywhere everywhere and also lieutenants just lost with the deer quite quite you just rock on their back just kind of looking like life sucks. All right. So anyway, so she says that and I'm like come again.
She's like well, so, at first, I thought they were robots because I'd run and I would see the deer there that I'd go past with the camera on its neck and But then I realized, when I kept seeing the same deer, it wasn't a robot that they have trained these deer. So follow us, when we go out the back gate and I'm like wow I'm not worried. Are you in the middle of this conversation? She's on arm so I'm okay. You're right.
So I was like, well, that's impressive know, I've not had that experience, have a great day. So I immediately found my class counselors and relate to them. The story of this girl is, is on a different planet. And my response from them was was that, you know, we need scientists for the lab and like, do they have to have guns? up anyway, she checked some of those categories so I think Dei is a modern Its term. Yeah, but it goes back.
I think decades. Now there are some phenomenal female FBI, agents and female support, you know, professional sport in the bureau. This individual wasn't one of them but when I came through as an instructor, there was this renewed push for a number how many female new agents were going to be coming to the academy which at the time was 25, or 28% was what was coming out of the ad of hrd, who was a non-agent And now I understand it's up to 30.
They want 30% of the agent population to be female by 2030, right? It's just an arbitrary number and which roads the quality of who you're going to put again, if that's your prioritization of the number, then you're going to have to not prioritize something else. I mean I was there at the Academy as instructor when several of the females that came through that launched that class action lawsuit. That was recently settled. Oh, I had two in my they were, they were atrocious.
The ones that I observed, as an instructor made legitimate hardcore judgment failures shooting unarmed role players. Let's let's shoot, let's say really specifically what we're talking about. So folks there was a lawsuit that was launched by a series. It was like 33. I want to say, but it was some number and double digits of female trainees that were kicked out of the FBI's Academy at Quantico. I saw it as a student.
Zach sawd as an instructor. The one who was abbreviated we've talked about on this podcast before, I don't mind saying her name. Elena para, I had no business ever carrying a gun. She was my classmate, she's a nice gal, she's a marine veteran, which is strange because she was like, about this big. She failed things that were not pass fail. She failed things like familiarization with the shotgun. I couldn't hold on to it and
actually complete the exercise. So I've had the same experience from my buddy, Gerald Boyle, see friend, we've had people come through the class that we're so bad. You were seeing, if the instructor side we were seeing it as their fellow students true to the point where students were going, you can't give this person a gun and put them in a major, urban area, because they're going to end up killing somebody. But they got paid out Millions.
Yes. Okay. That's that's the lawsuit for you guys. You can fact check it out there. You can pull the articles on it. It's, it's a big thing. And there's a lot of backstory there. So 2008. When I went through the academy, there was no Failing Hogan's alley, right there was no practical applications.
It was training all training. but when director Comey came in, he wanted to he said he wanted to hire on the merits but understood that there was this push to hire more minorities and females he's like, we solved that with Recruitment and we wash it out at the Academy. But the issue was the academy was not designed per se as a washout program, it was designed as an educational training program and if you couldn't pass the academics, then it was black and white people making 80% on
the test. It's a fail. There is no subjectiveness to it. so that's when suitability is created, that's when every block of instruction within the academy You know, had to have some kind of a test to it. So that's when they started creating tests for Hogan's alley. You know, test for DT, that was
going to be Pastor Phil, right? But also was coupled with the same time where the bureau was still trying to be a quote-unquote intelligence agency and they were doing this CIA model embed program where the agents and analysts were going to the same instruction approximately for the first 10 weeks of the 20 weeks Academy. So, all right.
Well, think about that. You know, early on when they still doing that, the new agent trainees were getting their guns until almost week 10 so they kept bringing that forward and forward but they still aren't coming to Hogan's alley for week 10. So it just put them on an
accelerated learning curve. Now, I'm not trying to defend the actions of any of these folks that were dismissed because there were males, females dismissed, white people, black people, you know, Purple People doesn't matter. You know, they had failures failures were documented, and if they racked up enough failures and they went to a suitability review board and the section Chiefs and 80s would make a
decision. This person stays this person goes, no individual instructor ever made any of those decisions, they just documented what they saw, what the goal post removed. The goalposts. It really depended on who the leadership was at the Academy, right? The goal posted had changed is if you were trying to prioritize someone's gender or someone's
skin color. As a prerequisite for coming to the academy, then you're just by the nature of it, you're going to have to push down other Performance Based criteria. But generally is an instructor. I still start kind of the same belka by thought I saw as a student. You know, we had some Heroes come through, we had some zeros come through and you had a lot of good Americans in the middle
that just needed good training. But we're the academy was struggling, was trying to be both an instructional program and a quote unquote, you know, testing washout, program across the field. It's not designed to be a selection that's all, and I never heard it put that way, but it makes a lot of sense that somebody decided to use a tool the way that it wasn't designed to be used actually. That's pretty much like the failure of a lot of things in the bureau. Yes.
Square peg, round hole, right? Absolutely square peg, ground. Same thing about having a law enforcement agency, be an intelligence agency. They're just not the same animal, you can't make them do the same job. Agreed. So, but I mean, Instructors in my unit were phenomenal folks. Guys and girls that's training
unit. What so I went through is a student, it was called preparation unit, PA you somebody rebranded his tactical training unit but it was the same core of instruction like you were to take the Instruct the book instruction of interview legal Etc, from the classroom side and then integrate that in with role player scenarios and at the same time, you're also teaching them very basic law enforcement techniques of how to clear rooms
and again you're applying the Firearms instruction and you're bringing it into a quote-unquote, real world setting. Yeah. But getting off track here, the failures that we saw were real I mean I watched individuals shoot unarmed role players on the floor. I watch people shoot their classmates in the back. Now, Grant one of those failures is just it's documented they get coached on that.
This is where you fail. But when that's repeated and repeated and repeated then, you know, typically, the magic number was three. If they had three failures across the academy, then they would go to a suitability review board. You might have a real life Dexter amongst you. And when somebody shot somebody on the other room, she shot the couch a few times. And then denied, she did it and you're sure how can you let that
person go forward one? They don't even know what the condition the weapon is. So, you know, the That, but they're selecting People based on their performance. Is a totally Yeah, it's on their non-performing, they're not performance. But I guess the worst thing is, is that It was really just giving a basic run through. It's like here's how you walk through a room like you said rudimentary. Here's How You Gonna Knock and
talk. Here's how you're gonna do some basic stuff in law enforcement and then we're gonna show you. We're gonna brief it, we're gonna show you. You're gonna do one walk through and then we're gonna grade you on it. And that's where people started seeing deer that were, you know, surveillance deer in my classroom. That's where we saw these. People just kind of lose their chests, they couldn't hold
together. So, I mean, I think realistically, and again, I'm not just fine the settlement with these Individuals that, you know, it's brought the class action lawsuit. The academy was trying to be something that it really wasn't and it was trying to do multiple cases of that. She's trying to teach agents Intel stuff and it was also trying to very quickly teach practical applications far arms Etc and then turn right around and test them on it and you saw failures and the failures were
real. The question is, what would they have been failures if they would have gotten more instruction? Because again, when you're in the 80% of that bell curve, they're good Americans. But they need instruction. Maybe they were cops before I wasn't a cop before, like I needed instruction on legal. Like, I could handle a gun. No problem. I had done basic CQB in the
military, no problem. But yeah, I'd never really thought about the constitutionality of, you know, having to shoot somebody in a war zone. It was either they were killing me or I was killing them. So again it was yeah that is the question and that is, you know again a constant refinement from the Bureau of square peg.
Ground hole. I'm hopeful that, you know, we'll get back to a purely performance-based category for for hiring, but I think only time will tell and I think the real disservice is some of that class action lawsuit are You know, the female's that graduated went on become agents, some of them were phenomenal and, you know, for others to claim that there was bias within the instruction and that's why they fail when their female classmate right next to them.
Did not. I feel like that bucket just doesn't hold water. You know, I mean, I I can recall at a female extremely short, went through, no prior law, enforcement experience. She was a class leader picked up instruction, really well, she took criticism really well. She went on and she reached out to me some months later and talked about how she appreciated. My instruction was so inspired by it that she started doing Iron Man's. And then tried out for the SWAT
team. Became a SWAT team leader, our became a SWAT team, member eventually became a SWAT team leader and then his entertained. I don't know if she actually went HRT selection, all from a person who's probably five foot nothing, no law enforcement background but so the midgets were just talking about. Yeah, yes. I mean, yeah probably taller except for the hair but again, it's like shows up that's well within the 80%. Yeah, good instruction becomes a phenomenal agent.
But these other folks are going to blame their dismissal on bias. It's not on bias, you could cleanse your dismissals because of inappropriate structure of Academia within the academy and the testing criteria. Yeah, it's certainly not by. I felt like women got more than a fair shake and sometimes they got more looks than they needed
to do to be fair. And yet, if you're using the tool wrong, I think there is. You see this is you're more moderate than me on a lot of this stuff because I'm just like, wow, it's terrible, like throw it out, but seeing it from the instruction side is helpful. It also kind of helps to understand that you've seen it from two times as much time I had in the bureau. Sure, I got to work with guys that had three times as much experience, and that actually
makes a big difference. It's like okay perspective matters, what you're seeing what the evolution if you understand where the tool broke, you might have a little bit more appreciation for people who are using it. Will you walk through rather than us, get bogged down on the minutia of training which is a massive problem. And I think that that if cash potel gets in, he's gonna have to deal with training issues right up front.
But can we walk through career? You said you were first office agent out of Richmond. Walk me through your progression what you worked because eventually we're going to get to a thing that people are going to understand why you don't work for the FBI and you didn't get to retire, and I actually want to get there as in close enough time. Yeah. Before 6 hours go by. Yeah, because we could do this for a long time. All right. So career progression.
So I came into the academy and 08 graduated February something, first week of February in 09 and went to Richmond division. I've been an Air Force intelligence officer, you know, spent four plus years learning all about is you know, Islamic radicalized terrorism. So where do they put me? And they put me on the jttf seems like a normal fit.
I spent a couple years on the joint terrorism task force in Richmond. Got to experience the pressure of you know the politics behind International terrorism investigations in 2009 and 10. You know I got handed a case it was hey this phone numbers and telephone apps. It's you know 600 Parts removed from the supposed terrorists. Get a fisa up on it. I'm like wow. No, but I'm gonna press on here, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a,
I'm gonna do a subpoena. See, it's still on active phone and get some tools, and we'll go from there. But what I did work is, you know, I kind of made a niche for myself on like prison radicalization. So, you know, we had some salafi Moss, you know, within Richmond, we had one most of the congregation of that were African-Americans, that had converted in prison, and then come back and worked in their communities. There was a lot of concern and in 09 and 10.
For financial support terrorism, right? Material Sports to International terrorism. We, you know, we were always looking for money going over to Yemen at the time so I worked cases like that. Nothing to prosecution. So it was all kind of a case of proving the negative. So when you're working in international terrorism as this probably still today if you open a case you need to prove that they're not a terrorist before you can close it. Not the other way around where
you like right. There's no presumption innocent on the National Security. There is not and that unfortunately also kind of went down to the domestic terrorism side as well which we can hit later. So I spent two years or a little more working International terrorism cases. And then I was fortunate enough to move down to the criminal Squad and spent the rest of my time in Richmond, working gangs, drugs and violent crime.
I want to hone in on something my buddy, George Hill, has observed from both the Intel side and then all. So working at the bureau, one of the sort of working hypotheses. We have is that after 9/11 everybody in the API focused on it International terrorism and they did that from 01 to, let's say, oh wait, oh nine something like 2010, you would have been right in that mix about that time.
They were looking for the next generation of it, which was homegrown violent extremists, which is to say, domestic, Green Card Us radicalized by overseas ideology whether it be Prisma or something else. Which I guess that's probably not the nicest way to say it, but that's what you call. When was that the observation you saw before it moved to the new version, which is now domestic violent extremism? Domestic terrorism, did you see that? HVAC shift? Let's say 08 to 11 something
like that. Yes. So in 10 years for sports so you had Yemen was really kind of popping off at the time. It was looking for that financial support coming from within the United States. This is pretty Isis, but it was, you know, Al Qaeda, the base still had an inspirational construct to it. Isis took a, to a new level as far as trying to radicalize
people remotely. But it was looking for individuals that were willing were being brought into the radicalized islamist fold in the United States, but the threat concept was that they were going to travel to places like him and where they're going to send money or arms to places like Yemen and then trickle down from that would be a lower.
Sense of probability that they're going to do attack within the United States. So we were looking at them exporting their radical us, you know, ideologies out or go and get aligned with the foreign powers that were out there doing yes. In war zones. Yes. At the US. Yes. And so like when like you're you know your prison Islam, you go into federal prison you gotta survive if you're in a medium or a high security facility so most people they're gonna join a gang.
Yep. If you're if you're white you're going to potentially, you know, either go to a motorcycle club or some other kind of white nationalist group, or you gonna join a religious group, that's strong enough to build a provide identity and protection and most of a lot of its recruitment center. Yeah, a lot of that was, you know, salafi which is kind of, you know, Orthodox Islam, if you will. And so folks would get that particularly African-Americans would would get that on the
inside and then they'd come out. And again, you know, if they Bumped into an informant or you got any kind of darragh on anybody and you had to open on that and you had to prove that they were in a terrorist and there's so much I want to say right now but I probably should do it off camera. Yeah, we can I want to get more than anything else. It's more like foundational. Yep. And I think it's so interesting about what you just said too.
Is that they were asking you to get on people that didn't have PC for it. Yes. And you're push back was no, I'm gonna go do criminal process because if there's PC for criminal process, if there's something for subpoena, That's the tool you're supposed to use. Yeah, I mean I I quickly realized that, you know, The sac needs to show Numbers. They want to show that Richmond is not an underperforming off office from a terrorism standpoint. They want to have Faison numbers
on the board. That's what counts right. Even though legally it's supposed to be you should investigate with the least intrusive techniques possible. The reality is unfortunately because the bureau tries to whatever everything into a matrix, That they prioritize quote-unquote, Advanced Techniques will advise a title 3 pen? Register trap and Trace, you know, GPS, tracking, warrants all that kind of stuff. Are, you know, Undercovers or Advanced Techniques.
So from a, you know, a point scale, you're going to get more points for that. So obviously, I didn't straight up to my supervisor know what, when supervisor came by and said, Zach, I need, you get some visa on those phones. It was just kind of like you know, north south turn right around and just went back to. All right. Well I mean I gotta if we get there we get there. But I mean, I still got a subpoena these numbers. See if they're active, I got to get tolls, see what we got.
I've got to find these people behind these phones. I got to see what other drog is out there. Either within the system. Once I get a name behind it Etc and in that particular case it never got there, right? You know and you're also saying, you're doing the least intrusive means getting to the point where you know so it's not supposed to be the tool that you just break out of the belt. It's not bazooka right up front. No it doesn't start at the top
and work your way down. You don't go title 3 and then kind of scale down to a subpoena but you work your way up and as evidence of criminal conduct which International terrorism is still criminal conduct. There's Title, 18 violations for materials you building your investigation up from there as it's warranted. Only ever did a couple of title 3's on the Crim side just because you don't always have to go there. Like, that is the most a title 3 wire table is the most intrusive.
Arguably thing that the FBI or any law enforcement agency. Could do tap your phones and listen to everything you say to everybody. Now, Grant, there's minimization requirements and Etc. But you don't always have to go there to build a case. There's lots of ways to gather evidence of criminal conduct that can get you to a successful
prosecution. If you are investigating a crime and it's expensive, it's Manpower intensive, it's just puts every like once like you can only do so many of those a year before you're going to completely tax, the resource you have in any office. So if you're an RA, like you used to run great, it was even the stuff you're doing and it wasn't just yum. And you're looking at Sudan, there's about bunch of other countries, that sanction Nations. There's so this is what we talk
about. All I remember sitting in a room because my years in the Middle Eastern Africa and when they would ask me, I would go meet with President, Al Bashir in Sudan and they would ask me questions, mark still jander, was the next Congressman? During your time got caught up in that deal and we're spending one year, one day. Got pardoned by President Trump in 2020. so I know about this like first hand, so I'm like you know, because I was there to do
a good, right? So they had me write white papers and it's a you know the US and the Hague to have President Bashir released from his icy indictment there was all sorts of things that we're doing and when I came back in the United States you guys would show up in suits. To the airport, taking a little room asked me, a bunch of questions. First time, I was like Jetty Kathy, like, hey, what are you doing? And I didn't write the Second World on Team America.
Yeah. Well America, we're gonna try the Daniel Penny syndrome, know terrible. And then, as I started, you know, I spoke at the care or the what's it called, Muslim American society and mass deal. Yes, in on December 26th, two years in a row and talked about reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. I remember CIA guys that would come talk to me and sit down with me and the middle of some country that I was sitting in and just knew right away. I was like, okay, so who do you
work for? Because he just walk up to somebody and say, okay, you're You're an American. So you know, when you start talking about what happened there and material Terrace, I feel like the FBI for my experience missed. The Mark was looking for political Targets. Not not targets of people that were actually doing harm and in those areas, and I was there, like, I was literally, I had a seated at the table at many of
these deals. I talked to people in Syria and, and Libya and He also Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. I mean all those countries and I would go in there with the idea of, okay, tell me what the problem is, let's work the problem and I would walk out and it would be like, I mean, I came in from and it's not interviewing for me, but We should talk about this because I'm curious. Yeah, because the Richmond office is ultimately the office that and ended up doing the prosecution on Mark Soldier.
Specifically, I started in 2007. So prior to you, but continued on all the way into 2010 and then in 2011 obviously served as one year one day, right. So we ended up being a blessing because actually found cancer in the federal government had to pay for his cancer treatment which was pretty awesome. Yeah. So yeah, no, I mean tons of conversations to have their my blood pressure goes up.
When we talk about it, you need the blood pressure today because you on death's doorstep last night at 1 a.m. and we were coming in. So I'm gonna make this blanket statement. So institutionally the bureau makes a ton of failures. Yeah and I think the bureau Didn't like square peg, round hole the bureau, consistently as an organization fails to recognize that if Excellence exists, it's people at the bottom that are doing it.
Yes, it can hire and has higher. Excellent people will become special agents or other Specialties within the bureau that have done some, excellent work. But oftentimes it's at Sometimes they're a factor is at odds with the bureau because it's such a bureaucracy. They succeed in spite of the bureau. That's a good way to put it. Thank you, Tom. So I'll give you a quick example. So when I was still on the jttf, I Interviewed a gentleman by the
name of Khalifa haftar. Bring a bell for either you guys that face says it does. So he's, he's in charge of Eastern Libya at the moment. He had been, he had attempted a revolution against his former, I think Academy classmate will mark it off. He Supported by the CIA. But unfortunately his troops were slaughtered on the beach because could you he was coming. So this is early 90s. My history, I'd have to brush up on his way. I almost say like 9 2. 9 3 4. He was in wfos territory.
So I wrote up this huge EC and sent them like all the reasons, all the things that this guy can have access to that are all the reasons why he should be an FBI informant. Do you think he got opened? Know. I didn't get a phone call about that guy.
He was a subject until the most recent Libyan Revolution and after was Headed over and then the FBI was in cleanup mode of, you know, scrubbing their databases and realizing like I had launched this, like 10 pages, you see that wfos and hey there's this guy from phenomenal access. You guys should do something about it. So again is that individual fair and organizational? Fair hard to say but my point being a failure of the fact that organizations don't speak to each other.
I mean there's no communication between CIA and FBI. There's kind of a break there so there's someone could be working on one thing with someone's working on some totally different. Yeah, I mean, you do have, you know, lx1, right. So you have the integration of the CIA and the FBI but working with the CIA they're an interesting group of Americans that work in the CIA both as individuals and as an organization.
So there is some institutional breakdown in Communications there between the three letter agencies. But there's also a bunch of good people in there just trying to get work done. And I would imagine that like within the bureau where, you know, they're working in spite of the bureaucracy agency. You've got some of that too, where they're working in spite of the bureaucracy. So getting back to my career path. If you if you let me take a quick break to it, we're going
to get into your criminal work. When you transition over on that side before we do it. Let's throw up the logo for my friends over at Patriot coolers if you would Mr. Apollo Um, Patriot coolers folks, they have been the longest sponsor, the Kyle, sheriff and shows. We really appreciate them. Always keeping us on the air, it's Patriot coolers.com, the promo code is Kyla. I've actually got something I brought with me. It's a brand new Patriot cooler for you Zack. It's got our badge on it.
That one is yours and things. That's the 20 oz you guys have seen. I've been sitting my coffee out of this. This is, they're great products. I've been using them. Seriously. I've been using them since I was on duty, as a surveillance guy, it's the one, two things you need. You need a pee bottle and you need a cup of coffee and you can sit indefinitely and watch bad, guys. You don't need binoculars. You don't need cameras. You don't even need a radio. You mix those bottles up.
You try not to make the bottles up, that he gave that to me first and took it back and said, give it to you. This is so this is not working. And guys, if you want to go and check out, there's the Kyle seraphin collection. You can find it in any of our show notes. They're always out there. It's the Kyle's favorite show collection, which is just badges like this.
You go get yourself engraved. It's the Gerald boils would have collection of all the different suspendable logos, whether you want the rifle or you want the upside down flag and so on. And you know, maybe we can turn that flag, right? Side up maybe that badge can go right set up pretty soon we hope but in any case that's where you guys find it. So thanks so much for them. All right, criminal move when did that happen? What year? Proximately 2011, okay. For sure.
Did you change offices or you just changed? Well, I just went from the third floor to the second floor. So this and this is predating when they before they skipped all of the jtts. So when I first threw on my hdf, it was not in a skip for those. Don't know. That's a sensitive compartmental information, facility. So, the entire FBI building is Open storage top secret, but
it's not top secret SCI. Molars Direction was I want all the jttf to be Skiffs in argument being so that we could more easily exchange information with our other three letter agencies. In reality, we had a skiff off of that, like we had smaller gifts. I think, the unfortunate reality of that decision was where they're, you know, the bureau was faulted and 9/11 for not sharing information within itself.
When we didn't have actual walls, then we turn around and built actual walls in between our criminal and National Security. Squads. And that by just general nature mpes, the good flow of communication within the FBI. All right. So that aside. So I moved just, you know, downstairs on the criminal Squad, we had a safe streets, game unit task force. So I became a member of First base we were they were working at G shine Bloods case so I joined that subsequent to that was a nine.
Trey what's case with title? 3's on that? Had a great time, I'm just a lot of fun so a lot of surveillance a lot of go ahead, go, was that the kind of work you thought you were going to do when you entered the FBI? I mean, I'll be honest, I mean I think going into the FBI I had a ton of ignorance is what I was getting into. It just looked awesome. It looked exciting, it looked like a challenge, it looked like I can make impactful decisions there. And I was right.
I had a phenomenal time in Richmond division, as a street agent. You know, I had never met an FBI agent when I applied. So, when I went through the process, right? You were very much. You don't get to see behind the curtain when you're going through the application process to become a new agent.
So, when I was handed my conditional letter of appointment, July of 2008. I asked the non-agent recruiter out of sale television, if I could finally meet an FBI agent and yes, I went had coffee with a gentleman, who was in the gtf there in Spokane and he was like, came in it, you know, we're not perfect. But with there's some great things behind the curtain, you're gonna have a great time.
Um, filled me some confidence. The only other Focus I'd ever worked with in Iraq, on my last deployment, they were retired FBI agents over there on contract that were in theory. They were supposed to be training. Brigade combat teams on how to take kind of a criminal investigative perspective towards some of the threats. So like obviously IDs at the time in 2007, 2008 were literally popping. Which is why I was over there
for a task force. Troy was kind of idea, so these guys were over to say like, all right. Well, if you have an explosion, let's let's work it backwards like a crime scene. That was a concept.
So I met a couple of those guys and you know, they had, you know, told me some more stories about it, but beer, all the other one that I didn't know what I was getting into, sure, Fun Factor went way up. When I Went down to the criminal Squad. So, for folks wearing this like, when you get to the crimes stuff, that's what people always
call the running and gunning. Like, actually doing the FBI works because transactional business national security stuff, would you agree that it's kind of like long-term investigations, but when you start getting into criminal stuff, it's fast-paced. It's transactional business. It's like low level guys, grabbing them up working your way up, that kind of thing. Yeah, and I still, I mean, you know, safe from skating in a task force.
And so when we work and talk West, which would be transnational organized crime, Western Hemisphere. So think, drugs got to put an acronym to everything. Talk West. Sounds less cool than drugs though. Obviously. So I still worked long term Enterprise but it's just you're no longer proving the negative. You are building up for the positive. I wouldn't open a case unless I was like I know I can get to the end result.
I only have one criminal case of talk West Case into a Narcotics trafficker that I never could get there. He was so wildly and he was never had any real patterns when he was on or off as far as like when he had a supply when he didn't. It never really got there.
You know, we got him with some low level State charges for drugs but I never really could get a good Federal and I couldn't collect enough evidence for otherwise, everything I investigated became a federal nightmare in one way shape of the other. We're on National Security side. Again, you've proven the negative, the vast majority of a terrorism cases, particularly on the international terrorism side or you investigate you gather enough evidence to say not a
terrorist we can know close. Can you an idea of time frame how long, an average TV Chase, might be open versus a criminal case. It was so a lot of variants there. So on the counter terrorism, International terrorism cases. You know, if it's a pi so a preliminary investigation, it can only be open for six months and it can be extended once for another six months. So it maximum at that, Level that can only go for a year if it becomes a full investigation then it can somewhat go on
indefinitely. But again the bureaus concern on that is always liability and then the numbers is this case going to bite Us in the ass. If this person turns out to be a terrorist, we haven't done anything about it and then is this case, generating numbers that we're going to go towards the Matrix of whether or not we're being successful as a division or not. So some of those cases can go on easily for years on the criminal side, it really depends on what
you work. If you're working a violent crime Squad and you're doing bank robberies, Hobbs act, robberies Etc, then those can be short-lived, couple months, you know, six months Federal indictment and moving on with it. If you're working gangs then
it's usually a slower build-up. You're taking some guys off, along the way, you might be getting State charges on them, to flip them as informants leverage, leverage, leverage, and then you're going to build up to either just a big conspiracy charge, maybe a racketeering charge, Etc, to get into something public crops in cases can take a while White Collar cases. So think like bank fraud, wire fraud typically can take a while Probably the quickest turn ones would be. Child pronography
investigations. So see Sam cases so child sexual abuse material cases. I think is the most publicly, correct or politically correct term at the moment for a job board. I personally think you guys just carry chains in the car. So when you pick them up, you just put them in the back tie. A little thing around them and drag them to the sorry. Take him to the Marshall.
That's right. It takes literally, I'm from, I'm from Montana and then I said my last, you know, you just Asian was was Idaho. So there's still that, you know, old west mentality out there of like we've got posts in front of the courthouse, like, we can get this done real fast. I just think you waste money on someone, that's just a deviant. Sure. Yeah. And I'm no longer a proponent of the death penalty because of the money we spend on that and that's a whole different
sidebar. We don't need to get into right now. All right, so time for Weis on sea Sam's. So child sexual, abuse material cases, those typically will turn for early quick, so whether you're getting a Nick, Mick hit on that or wherever you are, quote, leave is coming. From that, hey, person X has exchanged or is in possession of child pronography, or they're eliciting. Child, pronography from a child or an undercover that is posing as a child online.
Those cases move fast because it's They're fairly simple. It's either they have that material, right? And it's been validated as c-sam. Or they don't. And so like you're going to get an IP address, you're going to have files that have been exchanged. It's already been validators. Like those are images that have been processed through here. We know those are child, pronography images. We're going to get a search warrant.
We're gonna probably get a confession and then indictment and move on. So there's a broad swath, Kyle for the, you know, some can turn in a couple of months, but Bureau is known for long perm, investigations, almost at times to our detriment, right? Sure, sometimes Decidedly too slow because the crime's are still happening. You that local law enforcement, you got local prosecutors, my
wife is a local prosecutor. You know, I I really feel for them because, you know, trying to get a federal prosecutor to commit to we're going to take this at the end of this chain is that definitely that well and the other thing I always try to get people to understand because I think it's not common.
If you're not in that space it's actually if you're used to law enforcement and you don't know the intelligence side of it or the CI, the CT side That those National Security cases tend to be very circular, they're continually spinning, they're continually putting out more leads. They're continually grabbing more subjects, building the network, a lot more information based whereas criminal prosecutions are always linear, it's like a federal crime
happened. We're going to find that people who did it. We're going to go gather the evidence and then we're moving towards indictment, which is really it takes it into the, you know, out of our hands. Now, it's going to be the prosecutor thing. So they can be a lot faster because there's actually a destination and that's not always the case if you're trying to prove the negative, it's all. So from a human being standpoint, it's just a lot more rewarding because you're getting
to a point of success. Whereas on the, it side, your success in prosecution is rare. Greater successes. Well, all right. So this guy wasn't a terrorist. So I turned he or she into an informant, right? Or you found child pronography, which we had a we hit a w. Okay. And in the 23rd year, they found, you know, see Sam on his computer. So they ended up getting him for that. But even under operation for two and a half decades, It seems problematic for a lot of people that are looking at.
It's like well, if you look at anybody long enough, you're eventually maybe gonna find it. Probably not child pronography but jaywalk good. Yeah, they will eventually find something they're wrong. So anyway, it's just I like to give people as much perspective about this is a nuanced problem. This is not like a, oh, shut it all down today. This is not like, oh, everything that gets done, is bad because I guarantee, you know, people that do good work. They're doing it today, I do as well.
So I keep I keep moderating on this when I start thinking about some of the things that it does. Well, maybe it's part of the bureau itself. I think that's a very strong point. I've brought that up in my own words a couple times, right? Because at the moment there's, you know, if you watch the Sean Ryan show or something like that, there's there's perceivably some credible intelligence that there is Homeland threat again, within the country that there are Bad actors in the country.
You know, that have come across the border or legally or illegally that are planning to conduct some kind of attack. terrorism by its very nature, is political Terrorism bites, very nature builds upon fear. So it's alright. It is using fear to attain a political objective. It is going to be important for the FBI to look for that the American citizens, want the FBI to look for that. But my word of caution. I think this is what ties into
the new ones of your comment. Kyle is American politicians, as representatives of our of us of the citizenry. Need to realize that if they go to DEFCON 5 of like we have to find terrorism FBI, you have to find terrorism. Then well-meaning, agents are going to respond to that pressure and non well-meaning bureaucrats within the agency, are going to respond to that pressure with. Setting the Constitution aside and going after people.
So what happens when that happens at the highest levels, which is, I think what people are pushing to right now and which is ultimately, would lead you to you leaving the FBI. I was asked to leave, but anyway, that side, but yes, I am very much. So, but because you had to, you had a decision to make. Yeah. Yes. There are a lot of inherent dangers of politicizing our response to the threat of
terrorism in this country. American citizens need to be very cognizant of what their empowering, right? Because we empower the federal government, what we're empowering a federal government to do. We do not want to lose our values as a constitutional republic where we as Citizens Empower our government to do certain things on our behalf that we throw out those constitutional values in search of terrorism.
Yes, the FBI and sister agencies need to reasonably investigate Threats of terrorism, need to reasonably. Try to prevent acts of terrorism but trying to be left of the Boom. Based on intelligence is extremely difficult. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater but I that I mean don't throw the Constitution out in our attempts to find terrorism. So that is my for your audience. That is my words of caution.
When we're Legitimately fearful of another Act of terrorism within the United States. We, if we want to be a free country, we have to accept some amount of risk, right? Whether that's risk of being offended or risk of, you know, an active shooter or risk of a terrorism attack, there has to be some kind of balance if you swing the pendulum too far. Like I think we've seen both on the international terrorism side
and the domestic terrorism side. You're going to you're going to have abuses by law enforcement in agencies like the FBI some by very well intentioned agents trying to just get out there and get it done some by not so. Well, intentioned managers within the FBI that are simply just trying to respond to the Matrix of exact you just open this case. Give me a Facebook. You see what I'm saying? All right. So I moved to Criminal. More G shine, Bloods. Work, nine, trade, Bloods.
I had some quote unquote. Talk West cases. I was asked to join the DEA task force. So Dia Richmond, is a satellite office from the Washington field. They have three squads there. They have a high school. They have an all agent task force and they have a mixed task force mixed task forces, DEA agents. And then, you know, Task Force officers from state and local and other feds. So, I was asked me the first FBI agent to be on their task force on 20 years or something like that.
And had an absolute blast and extremely high performing task force. I had some of the best cops I have ever seen tfo's with me. And it was usually a couple of search warrants restaurant a week. I did more. Search warrants and arrest warrants with my Daya group. Then I did was swap, so I joined SWAT. I was fortunate enough to be asked to join SWAT or try out for SWAT within a couple months of landing at Richmond. I was a pretty reasonable
shooter. They saw me, shoot, I had some military experience and honestly, they were they needed people, they saw that, you were seven two and you probably could carry. They saw that. I was five foot seven and they're like, we could, we could put, we could use this guy. So I really enjoyed being on the spot. It was a savior for me.
When I was the gtf, when I was like, I don't know if I made the right choice, leaving the beer, even DOD, we're still in all these hot Wars over here on twiddle in my thumbs. You know, going into prisons. And talking to these guys about like, what books, they're reading, Etc. Being on the SWAT team being with some of the highest
performers in the division. And you know, spending three to four days a month doing shooting and seeking B and you know, surveillance training and so forth was was very rewarding for me and it kept me motivated. When I switched over to criminal, then I had a whole bunch of things. Keeping me motivated. Okay, says, I had the other game cases on my squad. I had Diaz cases and then eventually, I also became a part of Virginia state police's, Countering our products, task force.
One of my last cases that I worked there with, which was again, just to talk West case of Cocaine and heroin, we don't really deal with meth in Richmond back in those days. It was all cocaine, crack cocaine, and heroin. Did you guys deal with PCP? The way that we saw it up in DC know, but we went up, so you had some of that bleed over into Winchester. So Winchester, you know, that the city of Winchester and the territory around it falls to
Richmond division. So you had some of that PCP and stuff that was coming out of DC and was Landing there. So, not my investigative cases, but SWAT team would go up there. Oh, Some of those you're born in Winchester. Yeah interesting. Yeah I don't know. Um by accident is an accidental birth, it wasn't on purpose. God meant you to be born. There, what are you talking about this crazy? Yeah. Right. You know what I would rather live in Winchester in DC? I don't live there.
Yeah. 100 times out of 100. Yes, way better like even with PCP there I would still rather be around. I'd rather have PCP trucked in from DC and live in Winchester. Then being DC and deal with whatever's there which is awful. Sure but again I can't highlight. That is is ugly. Is my divorce was from the bureau. I had a phenomenal time as a street agent in Richmond. I will call it on a horse. It's funny. I refer to as being an ex-girlfriend there is A relationship there firing.
Yeah, well I technically they consider me a resignation actually the lawsuit that we have is about whether or not they actually constructively terminated me which is the ongoing funny thing about it. I was told people was like The bureaus ugly, when it breaks up with people and it doesn't do it in a nice way, like, throws all your stuff out on the lawn, it lights it all on fire. And then as you look at your stuff burning and you're like, you change the locks.
I don't live here anymore. And they're like, why did you leave us? Yeah, that's crazy. It's like, it's your fault. I almost feel like a fraternity as you start seeing, some of the things are wrote inside of the FBI. Like you, you turn your back on me even though they were doing something on ethical or they're asking you to do something unethical and Essence.
It's a fraternity. It's a we have to no matter what you have to stand behind us. It's the same old police mentality that I think is dangerous for communities as well as a, you know, right is right and wrong is wrong. And we just need to kind of have a different barometer for how when people come through. Whether it's the FBI or, you know, State Patrol or any of these that the barometer is, you
know, always do good. And I think that's been lost in some form with with leadership and maybe that's and again, I'm on the outside looking in. So I don't have the same sort of. I mean, I can talk to people like Steve friend who says, yeah, they want to call her. I'm like Getting me. He's like, yeah, you want to sit in a room and finger, painting and Cherry yoga. Zach. Did you, did you read the Durham report? My chance parts of it.
Yeah, there are certain things I was looking for in there. That weren't included, what kind of things did you not? See, and then I'll hone in on the thing that I thought was most pointed there. Um, I know the sac and the case agent on the Clinton Foundation case that was tanked by doj. I've heard some things about that. They were interviewed by Durham and it's not in his report, how interesting? And anyway, so without going too, deep into that rabbit hole. And that's the thing.
These things are very selective when they put out your acting like it's the culmination of all the findings. And here's what you all paid for, and it's very curated information. Yeah. The one thing that Durham did say that I think was truly accurate and you're actually alluding to it as you're speaking. Is that There's no policy that would save the FBI. There's no procedural book. That says, if you did it just this way then everybody would be
right? It has to come from and this is Durham's, essentially I'm paraphrasing. He said it takes like the mindset of the people that are hired to basically know the Constitution is the number one goal and you have to do it right. Because it's right. And if you don't have people that have that mindset like you do where they're like, hey, give me a fisa. If they go get a fisa, they are the problem and there's no policy that would be a guardrail against that. It just doesn't matter.
You'd always find a way around it. No, I'm gonna Circle back to your comment, but Kyle for you, there is no good litmus test for Heroes and zeros in the bureau, or anywhere else. And there is no policy that's going to help you really sift through the heroes and zeros. Its Culture, The Bureau has a history of hiring really good Americans. But we're a cross-section of society. So we're getting some zeros into
the bureau. What we do not have and what we've had Corruption of is our leadership culture. Yeah, you could argue that we don't have a leadership culture. Oddly enough, the bureau is known for providing some of the best law enforcement leadership instruction that there is to be found. I hear this, the National Academy, it makes me cringe because I think how is that possible? Because there's no leadership in the bureau at all, it's all management.
The folks that teach that. Would tell you that you're not going to teach an SES or senior executive service FBI agent. So, Eight essay section, chief Sac system director, and up anything. Because they ego know it, all they are the epitome of leadership in their own mind and that is what, culturally, the bureau tells them Bureau, doesn't tell them. You need to learn a culture of leadership. You're told, you are a culture of leadership. It's like, but so to Circle back
to your comment. You get indeed any organization. You go into is going to have culture, and you're going to get a Doctrine into that. I'm you think of the Marine Corps, right? You wanna talk about culture and those guys getting in gals, get indoctrinated into that immediately. But in the bureau you are introduction to. That culture is good and bad.
In the one of the bad examples. Like what came out for me is first thing Decatur. You were told you will not embarrass the FBI and if the FBI ever wants to screw you, it will find a way. So that gets ingrained and gets placed on repeat throughout your career, but when you're having fun and you're not the guy or gal, that's in the crosshairs, you've not embarrassed the bureau, you're running a gun in you're rocking and rolling, you're getting Federal
prosecutions. You're running informants, and you're just having the grandest of times. This is the thing that people don't understand. Yeah, I don't even know that people are getting crushed or it's it's all your problem. The bureau, suppresses that information it's always here, say, it's always, well, I heard about a guy or I heard about a gal and it's never really real with the presumption of guilt is that they did something wrong. They must have because they look.
So here's Zach, he's doing fine. And he's like, I'm running my cases. I hear about this dude who did this? Well, it must be more to the story. The bureau is probably right in this case is the default assumption until you actually witness it do something that is so objectively wrong. You're like, whoa, how did this happen?
Yes. And you never think it's going to be you in the Crosshair because it's just not you until it is I lived I mean I pushed hard and I had a great time as a case agent and I always the bureau has so many rules and regulations. I always just assumed that On Any Given Tuesday, I violated something, whatever it was forgot to turn the Bluetooth off on my phone before I came in the building something. But I believed that as long as
what I was doing was in good faith. that I might get slapped on the wrist for an inadvertent infraction, but I'd get dusted off, sent back out into the world and told to go forth and Conquer. All right. So let me let me tell you what, people feel, yes. Because I think what you're getting to is I'm and this is the problem. This this if we go to work, the
problem, not the symptoms. So the symptoms are what you just said that this presumption of innocence that same presumption is actually applied across the board.
There's lack of consequences and the people that go out those consequences or the judges so we can look at the Durham report and some of the prosecution that he saw it in DC knowing that full, well, that he wasn't going to get a prosecution even though the people in The Stand actually admitted to what they did, which was a growing and yet they came back with a not guilty verdict.
So you have you have a system that does not allow for accountability allows for, you know, for political persecutions and what happened to you, what happened to what happened to Steve, what happened to Garrett? What happened to? I mean, you could just keep going down line, all of those things that happened, you wanted to presume that everyone out. There is writing stories, they won't stories about you. Yes, saying that you did something wrong when you whistle
blew? So, no matter what happened, the system was designed to tell people that they're right, and you're wrong and we can Crush you. Now, imagine that on a broader scale, for the American people, who don't have a voice, they don't have a lot of people on, on X. They don't have the ability to tell people what's going on, but yet the story was that they did
something wrong. So you could start to see the erosion of trust, not just for the FBI, but to see and I got to see it up front and personal both on the foreign side, I'm not respecting, the sovereignty of other nations and on the domestic side of saying, why are we not sensitively looking at what's happening? In this case, the election system. So things like that. And so there's this, this whole presumption, this whole kind of cloud that is built over the American people and the American
people until it bites you. You're not caught in the net and as soon as you get caught in the net, everyone assumes you did something wrong. That's right. Which is why you have a 97% or 98%, you know, settlement ratio with the, with the FBI or or anyone because she can't fight City Hall. And when you do, they're gonna
punish you. And what you saw with Jason's the j6s, they're gonna punish them, and then they're going to, they're going to increase the crime or the punishment exponentially because you did not bow down to us. And so, this is the ethos. This is the problem that I have is that the FBI is just falling that downward degradation of our society. It's been there for a long time but now the, you know, the emperor has no clothes and the frustrating part is I see what it's done to us.
See what it's done to us. He was something Garrett, Garrett's more pissed off. Anyone else by the way? He's no, he's not a pissed off that I am. He just, he's just opening up a little bit right now. So I feel for you because I felt it. In the Americans that have felt it, they might serve three four or five years in prison. You did good work but but I really want to get to what why you left the FBI.
Let me add one little piece of color because there's always a little bit of gray and the stuff. The problem is and I think Zach will validate this. That 90 that 97% that you you know whatever it is. 95% 97 we hear different numbers of why people settle why they end up playing out. A huge chunk of that is because those people did the crime, that's why the myth is able to confuse. There are a small number of people that get absolutely targeted in ways that are
inappropriate. And I've interviewed some of them and it's shocking, you're like, holy crap. How was that possible? Because I saw guys like Zach out there doing criminal cases, they were doing it. Good faith. They were doing the right work and so when you dominate people that have done bad things, you're like, we're the good guys. Everybody starts feeling that they're like, okay, we're getting it. I know I'm doing the right thing. Everybody else must be doing the
right thing, too. That's small number of people are trading on. Its the first thing. You said, when you flash those credits, it's not your credibility that you're walking on. Its 100 Years of people that came before you did good things. And if you choose to abuse it here, you're still going to get that credibility. You're still going to be able to get all the strength of it and you're still going to have that massive machine pushing behind you.
So it's not so simple as well. Everything, the FBI has done is done is wrong, and that's where I always end up in the spot where I end up pissing off conservatives, you know, we'll put the capital c like major conservative groups know because I know fairly that there are things that were done, right? I had a conversation with a guy from HRT the other day. This is an interesting thing about mar-a, right? We know that HRT was probably used.
That's what we a lot of people have shared this with me. I don't think so on that but carry on okay assume that it was okay, let's just assume it was and you go well, that's it. Abuse because, you know, Marla was a presidential, you know, it was a protectee area by the Secret Service and there's no reason for it. And so I talked to a guy and I go, how do you square that do? Like, let's just assume that
it's true. That HRT, the hostage Rescue Team, FBI's, tier one SWAT went in and did that morning. How do you square that with those people? And he was like, What if they just wanted to have? Like the best because they're not gonna make any mistakes and they know that it's a Leo Rich environment. There's other possibilities for Blue on Blue.
Do you just bring in the best? Because they're gonna be able to walk through it and not get jumpy and you're not gonna have somebody accidentally shoot the wrong guy and I went That's the only argument I'm okay with and there's a possibility that that
would be true. There's a possibility you used your best SWAT guys Miami is an enhanced team so Miami has one of the better SWAT teams in the FBI so even if it's just Miami Swan you go you want to have SWAT, instead of regular agents, clearing it because somebody would get jumpy and you get one of those people that we saw fail out of the academy with a handgun. Surrounded by Secret Service people and they just have some conflict. So, is that a possibility? I have to entertain that, and
that makes you piss off. Everybody that wants the black or white. It's the same people that want really simple answers to really complex problems, which is 55, field offices, tons of different programmatic, you know, issues and threats. They don't all handle at the same way, so we're dealing with this problem and anyway you you saw unique thing which is so funny because I know enough about your story for the last. What?
Two, three years. And you hear all the stuff in the media and everybody knows that they're right. And nobody knows what they're talking about and I just kept saying it. So whenever you're ready to, yes, I saw it on your face, though. When I said that you're like, Hell. Yeah, that's how I feel, right? I mean it and it's painful because people are writing bad things about you, and, you know, that doesn't Define your character back in 2004.
You didn't make a decision to serve your country and go to, and go to war, because you want to do bad things. You didn't join the FBI. If you wanted to do bad things, and yet you took an ethical stand. And now I'm getting ahead of myself to get ethical stand and all of a sudden, you feel like the same thing that you serve. The American people has now betrayed you, and the apparatus is too big. It's big enough that you don't
have a voice. You feel like, no matter what they say, that already went around the entire world and it came back. And now you have to, you have to claw back on the truth. I mean, how do you how do you reconcile that? I mean it hurts. Yeah there is no real reconcile. The machine is built to the to protect the machine. Now. Maybe the machine is too cutting of a term. The bureaucracy is built to protect the bureaucracy. The fraternity is built to protect the fraternity.
The fix for that is culture. And, you know, when I think about what cache Patel as the future director of The Bureau, hopefully has in front of him. There's definitively some fixes that can be made up front. Reduction in headquarter size. Removal of, you know, some of the programmatic, you know, integrated program management. My audience knows this term. So yeah, so all that aside, but the reality of it is, if the FBI wants to be The FBI that the American people deserve.
It takes a leadership. Cultural shift that will take greater than a generation of FBI agents. So the folks that are being hired or getting in the queue, now going to the academy would require that introduction to a new culture. But you're also got to understand that that introduction and that investment is going to be degraded because of the culture they're entering. That's why I say it's greater than a generation.
So if you bring an inks now in your introducing them to a leadership culture, that is what you would want that stands for principal doesn't protect the agency at the forsake, its own folks. It would take, you know, 20 years, 15 years, 20 years for them to be in senior executive leadership positions. But because of the culture that exists today, Even the best instruction that comes out of the National Academy is going to be degraded because of the
culture they're entering into. So it's going to take an evolution of that and I think it'll take greater than a generation to see it. But it would take investment in decision from a cash potel or somebody else. Right now to start moving the ship in that direction. So I turn on the Titanic. Right. But know that the machine is built to protect the machine.
You were fighting a machine will get into some of the words of advice that I got you know when things started to go south by folks that were like you really got to think about what you're about to go up against Oh man. So Criminal stuff Richmond, phenomenal. Great people that I worked with in the bureau. Yes, there were some zeros too. Great people that I worked with that were cops. Yes, there are two again, it's a cross section of society, but I
worked some great cases. I worked some great techniques. I had informants. I did all the stuff that is SWAT. You know, it became a SWAT team leader, I mean, I checked all of feathers off right. You know, I had preacher sniper team leader, you know, repel master. You name it. I just thought at that time, my first 10. So years in the bureau that this job was everything I wanted it to be. Yes, I heard of some things that were like, hmm. That doesn't sound so good.
But it's not me and I'm not seeing it per se, right? It's not you and it's not like one of your close buddies where you know, the inside track that is correct in the bureau. Does a bang-up job of controlling the narrative. You don't talk about that stuff. You don't need to know. All right, so I do that, you know for eight plus years and then one of my very first supervisors goes back, you know he ends up becoming an sac and then he becomes the assistant
director of train division. And at the time culturally and potentially still today, Training Division is not a career progression step, right? Going to become an instructor. At the Academy is not thought upon in high regards by the executive management within the bureau, you were supposed to stovepipe. If you really want to go up in the bureau which is not much ejector, you got to go up and be a program manager headquarters and filing crime.
Gangs talk West or International terrorism, see what whatever it is, you work and then you'll pop back out as a supervisor for that particular block. And then in the new progress up going to train division is off of that and prior to me instituting a policy of you will not be an instructor for more than five years. Agents could leave the field become instructors of the academy and then just hang out there for their whole career and just suck down, GS 14 or gs-15.
Pay not get calls on nights and weekends. And you know, Some degree phone it in good job. So call me came in to retirement. Yep. So Comey came in and made a good policy decision for my personal standpoint of five years in year out. And you've got to have applicable field experience when you're going to come to the academy and teach. I think that was a good decision. Some growing pains with it because it's the same time of square peg round hole with the
integration of Intel analysts. And with we want the FBI Academy to be a little bit of a washout program. So as that was progressing again a new ad, I had a lot of faith in him. He was one of the good leaders that went up. It was a guy that was capable of sidestepping, some hand grenades.
And he asked me, if I would put in for the Academy, my current SAC at the time in Richmond division, thought I was an absolute moron for going to the academy because it was outside the progression career track and he's like, you're throwing your career at the window in my response was Sir, respectfully. I get that. But my goal isn't to become the next assistant director, like, I just want to enjoy my time in the bureau. I like to teach.
I said the opportunity for me to go and influence the culture at the Academy. I believe in the person that's asking me to come. So anyway, I didn't get handed a job. I put my 9542 Um so but I knew going in that you become stale there real fast. So I kind of said an arbitrary goal of Two years Max and I gotta bounce. Whether I gotta step down, come back to Richmond. Take a hardship transfer or compete for a desk. I grew up in Montana and I was
married at the time. And at the time, going to the academy. Right about them, my wife got pregnant with our first child. So my goals in life at that point is like I grew up in the Wilds in the mountains of Montana. I want to raise my children out there, you know, the easiest, the most obvious path is to try to compete for a desk somewhere out a region that I would like to live a desk is a supervisor reposition. So that's the that's the path I'm on.
I get to the academy, I have a phenomenal unit, it's similar in mentality to a SWAT team that it's very the bureau doesn't always have great camaraderie like squads, oftentimes don't have great camaraderie. There's a lot of times people are all working their own individual cases. What year was this when you're there, I got there in 17 so I crossed your path at some point there. I came in and used to teach the care Under Fire, okay.
So I come in for a day and work with them, but I know that because I look familiar from before that too and it was all I find I run into people always so many guys out there. Yeah, for sure exactly. Um so yeah, I got there and April of 17 and left in April of 19 that in there. That's all right. And I'm definitely not knowing for self-confidence so it's definitely getting its own way. I like that I have a great group of folks that I'm working with
were very close knit. You know, it's It's lots of good instruction but also lots of light-hearted joking. Amongst the instructors of just, you know, kind of getting through the rinse and repeat of it all. But I also got the first real look at house in the benches. Were for seen, you executive service was in the bureau. I landed with a good assistant director and a pretty good section chief, both of which are new from Richmond.
This was after Kelly left, whatever her name was, was Kellie, Fowler, or something like that, she leave. And then you're, you're guy came in as the 80 He would have come in in 16 and then he left in 18 and went and been became an EAD for a hot minute. And then he punched out. I'm thinking of a section chief, there was a female section chief. She was married to another aged Kelly, something or other? Uh, yes, she was atrocious.
As a human being, there were some not great Folks at the Academy. Unlike you, he will drop names all day twice on Sunday was Kellie. Fowler. But I mean, he swear, she was the, it was one of the dumbest things I ever heard. I just remember, being at the Academy I saw guys. Like you sure I saw, guys, like Paul Herron, who was like a stud, like, just awesome. You saw like, really cool. Dude. We're just like mellow, you know? Like just like What I wanted
people to be humble. This is this is always not the way. If you were, you know, turn down doors in Afghanistan. Like, you know, different things than me not presenting expertise that it wasn't. And then you had this lady and she was like one time me. And my husband were like kissing a convenience store because we saw two youth that were wearing hoodies and they were black. And I can say that because my husband's black and you're like, no, you can't say that. That's the dumbest thing I've
ever heard. And then she was like, yeah. And then we thought he was, like, you can't say that. It was like, the dump. It was like the classic. I also said in a CI training, I was like, I had a case for eight years and I went to the interrogation at the end of it. Still didn't know if he did it and I was like, that's your big story. You're retired, you had 25 years, you don't have a single confession, this kind of stuff.
So I saw some really atrocious, as you said, sesers the seniors that were running it where you had stud instructors and some crappy ones, but like a lot of good people that had good Hearts. Yes. And some horrific management that look like they had, they had no business being in the same organization as those people swb. What is that? They were swb. Shopping mall, black.
Guys, with the police. Yeah. Gwd Drive. Oh, the swb story, by the way, to them, basically, her husband going in and like deep hooding, the guys, and then they were like, buying chips. And he was an agent. I think he was a DEA agent or something horrible. I mean, there's just Anyway, there's a lot of bad people there, so it happened to be there, that assistant director in that section chief left about the same time promoted out. We got Replacements that were on
the 0 end of the bell curve. so, what I saw in that shift wise My entry for me, got removed because it was, well aware that the new section chief just didn't like him. So, he got, he got removed and then a career board was forced to be reconvened to rank somebody that they didn't rank because that individual was friends with the new section. She explained what a career board is. So people are. So if you're gonna promote into a GS 14 or gs15 spot, you will put forth up.
So a job will be posted internally. It'll say, the different skill set criteria that they want for that, and then you've got to write a 954. Just another government form where it says, Hey, right? Two examples of how amazing and awesome you are in this particular category could be, you know, leadership, communication, tactics, whatever. So if you're coming to Tactical training and it like you know tactics or Farms proficiency is probably going to be one of
them. So this individual and I'm not going to say the individual was a bad person because I didn't know him but they individual had no qualification for coming to a tactical training unit where you need to have experience. Because you gotta you gotta be able to teach from a position of authority, right? Like You know, I went out on a search warrant wants is not a position of authority, you know that you know I plan 50 of SWAT team leader.
You know I was drugged agent, I was violent crime, I was on DHS commercial, she's just whatever. Puts you in a position of authority to teach as a subject matter, export on the topic. So, this individual was not ranked. So when I say ranked, so when those packets come through, they'll pull a group of peers. So like if he's at the bottom, Yeah, so if you're if you're competing for a GS 14 spot like three, other GS 14 within that unit or going to be put on the
crew aboard. They're going to read all those applicants. Yeah. And they're gonna rank the ones that they want considered for the position. They don't have to rank them all. They don't have to rank any, I have to take any. So anyway, let's say for arguments say three people put in. Two of them were ranked for an unknown number of funded open
positions. This individual was not right because they didn't have the base level qualifications, they'd worked counterintelligence or Intel their entire career had never plan on arrest or Etc. So but they like to eat like Microsoft Sorry, just climbing your mouth. No, I just said that they were not ranked but they got a microphone that's yeah that's not what I was going with that. I mean, I'll let you know me because this Army so like slowly Yeah, it's just.
All right. Do you want to take this up a little bit so you can do less squatting because I'm trying to be at your guys. I know it's amazing. I want to the frame here, we're not, nobody can see me. Zach is standing at like a low, squat lunge for the entire time that he's been talking to us, like an absolute stud. He's doing like a mixture of like a catcher where he's kind of like, got the low squat, on both legs out. And then he's doing the Stagger step.
So, you're gonna have like serious quad ISO, you know, isometric ABR. Yeah, always be ready. Oh, it's just a little bit. All right. So getting back to like my first films at the false advertising in the bureau from the standpoint of. Thank you for coming for the comment. Oh, you know, excellent. So I'm getting my first real. Look at some of the issues within executive management of
the bureau. So, I am not on again it's you know, not me but my peers are being forced to reconvene a career board with you will write that person was that person? Asian Know, but it was a minority. Okay. Um, it's not who I thought that's all. So then it's a, you know, okay, you guys are gonna rank it but, you know, we're not gonna we understand that they're not qualified for TTU tactical training unit. So we'll just put them somewhere else in the academy. We don't want to redo.
So again, the the agents the GS 14 is my peers were like this doesn't smell good, but Okay, because it gets to the, where do I fight? What am I fighting? I'm effectively being told like you will do XYZ. Yeah. Is that illegal know? Is it? Is it wrong? Yes. They rank this individual and lo and behold the individual comes to Tactical training in it.
But now, the next thing is well to be an instructor and tactical training and you now have to be a certified FBI tactical instructor and there's now a policy and a program to go through where you're going to have a Certification course, but it's not an instructional course because again it's supposed to be certifying, somebody that's got a lot of technical experience. A lot of farms experience on. Yes, they can teach their proficient and they can teach
individual doesn't pass. So then the GS4 team supervisor specialty it's over. That program is said oh no. He will pass. and my peer and my friend is like, Sure. He passes the test. Doesn't pass the test. So what's the solution from an FBI executive management that person is the problem that person's the problem. We need to remove the roadblock and find somebody that will give me the yes. So anyway, he gets removed with so that the first real time that you'd seen that up close.
Yes, it was and man, did it give me a hard time and I am not usually one to hold my tongue, I had spoken my mind with the section chief when our unit Chief was removed and I was like, Sir, let me express to you the perspective that I believe my peers and I go you have a problem with this unit. And you're punishing our unit chief.
Now, if you're going to remove our unit, if you've got a bunch of senior GS4 teens in here, you should be pulling one of us up, be the acting unit Chief and developing us to become a GS 15. The response was like I had no problem with this unit. I'm not punishing anybody. I need his skill set over there and yeah you guys are senior just for teens, but we really need somebody with XYZ experience which is what I'm bringing in from outside your unit and you wasn't true.
Yeah, I mean it's a total weight of all. So anyway, yes call that was my first real experience with the Shenanigans that happen within the bureau from executive management. So I have this it's not happening to me directly but it's wrong. Yeah, it's wrong. You know what happened? It's your first look at it. Yes. And when that happens and I'll just share mine, you have a little bit of Doubt where you're like that I miss something.
Am I not reading the situation completely and I'm pretty sure that I'm right. But you're not like I'm gonna go in guns blazing on it. Did you did you kind of watch this one or have a moderated response compared to maybe I use the phone friend option. Okay, so I good option.
That's so I called the former add that had hired me for Training Division who had just recently retired and I said, Hey sir, I'm seeing this it's not me I'm not on the career board I'm not the program manager for the Tactical instructor certification but I trust these guys this is real information and this is wrong. his response to me, was Zack. You have already been selected for your ra Quarter Lane.
You're going to be leaving soon, there is no such thing as Anonymous in the FBI, keep your mouth shut. Go out, do good work. As your leader in the SSR, a position in Coeur, d'Alene and Press on with life. How did that sit with you? It's still sets poorly with me because I did what he suggested, I get my mouth shut because it's like, how do I report this? This isn't like, it's all hearsay for me. That's not uncommon though.
And that's the thing that people have to understand too because I want most people like, most people think that they're going to do the right thing. Exactly. Right. When it happens, they're gonna go. Oh sure. I saw something wrong. And I'm gonna stand against it and it usually takes a couple of things to create a pattern. What you see is an isolated incident, you go like That's weird. Yeah, yeah. Um Maybe it's not somewhere else.
Maybe this is not pervasive, you know, again that first exposure to it, it is a shock, but it doesn't necessarily spur you into action. And I think most people don't have a lot of empathy for that position.
I have a lot of empathy for what you just said. so fast forward into a comment that my very insightful wife gave me at the When I was first walked out of the quarterly on office before I was ultimately fired, she said Zach, you know, when you fall on your sword in real life, it cuts you. So thinking that, oh I would stand up for wrongdoing. A lot of things it's easier said than done. All right. So anyway, I see that. I heed the advice of my friend and one of my mentors and I keep
my mouth shut. I know other guys report it, nothing ever happens. That section chief ends up going on to become an sac. And then an assistant director and is a 100 percent, categorical zero. He's retired now, so has zero, the retired zero that retired look at that. So uh I in the midst of all, this I had developed. So, my father had a heart attack late 2016, that's one, I was in Billings Rae on a hardship when I put in for the TTU position. And I got to know the ssra there
at the time phenomenal guy. He's now retired, he and I are still friends and he's like, But I need you to come out and replace me out here as the ssra in Billings. And I was like, man, you know, Billings is not my favorite place in Montana, but it's closer to the mountains than Virginia Virginia Virginia, like a lot. I almost went to Billings, you know, that I went to. I had two options you dodged, a bullet, I almost went to I'm well and lose. I got the same thing.
The bullet still hit me so long short of it was on my okay, what? But the timing of his position posting we thought I was in the window and I wasn't so it posted too early. I couldn't put in for it, I happened to be down in Richmond Division and I had a very good rapport with a good management team that was down there and I walked in the sec's office special agent Jared Richmond office and I said, you know hey boss, what's going on?
Like what are you doing? And I was like well I mean working on my exit was gonna go for the Billings ssra but they posted it too soon and he's like why didn't you tell me you're A moron. Like I know all the sacs. Like why didn't you tell me you were trying to get a position? Like I So, he tells me to shut up. He picks up the phone calls, the sac out, in Salt Lake, and he's like, hey, I got this agent, he's phenomenal. Obviously, this is a liar, but I've got this phenomenal guy.
He wanted to get a desk out there. This building posted to early can we, you know, can we do anything? And he's like, no, it's already been a clear board. I'm sorry. But I'll kind of I will pass that out there that there's a guy that, you know, is looking for 14 spot and kind of keep the word out so long and short of that story is I subsequently get notification that the Coeur, d'Alene Idaho, ssra supervisory, senior resident, agent desk is gonna host It'll be in my
eligibility window. I compete with 10 or 11 other people and they hire me for the position. We go through that big government shutdown in January. 2019. That was fun. Delays my orders. But still anyway, I get out there. I move. I am I want to get there. I think I'm 41 ish 40 or 41 when I get there. Yep. And so you can sit a stationary supervisory desk for seven years maximum. So I can't ride that off to 51.
I could retire. But you know, all of us that have been in the Bureau of experience those supervisors come through where, you know, they're going to check that box. So they're going to do 18 to 24 months, you know, as a supervisor they're going to knock out all their inspections and they're going to quickly try to promote up to ASAP on their way up the chain. In other words, it's just a base they're touching and they're going around they're still going
around. The base is the different kind is what you're talking about who find? That's the job at wanna go. Do I want to supervise the squad doing work? And they try to stay there as long as possible this. Yep. So I made it clear that, you know, Maybe I do an inspection, maybe I wouldn't, I ultimately never did. But That's where I wanted to be. I wanted to raise my family there, my wife very quickly got hired on as a prosecutor there because she'd been a prosecutor in Virginia I moved.
So, my father continued to have health issues. I bought a place where I could build an apartment for him at home and he could live with me. So we did that. And it was, you know, all part of the grand life plan. Right? You know, I can do five, maybe
seven years, I'll step down. Go back to doing real fun work but my mentality was that I wanted to approach that position from leadership like in theory, you go out to an ssra position like you're a long ways from the flagpole and it should be all about getting the work done and you can lead and not just managed. I had a very mixed bag of folks so I had the Quarter Lane Lewis and rs resident agencies, I had some really hard Chargers, I had some not real hard Chargers.
I learned a lot of Leadership Lessons there that we could save for a different conversation. As far as like, you know, concepts of leadership leadership, development is the Bureau teaches that stuff. It's all OJT. All right, so to fast forward. So I had been there for several years. There were two issues that I'd been warned about before I got there.
That should be addressed. We had a violent crime task force, that did very little Federal work but the bureau still spent 250,000 dollars a year on it and then we had a US attorney's office that took very few prosecutions so in show up its know everybody he's start putting a plan together and how to address those two issues and that's what I did.
I had folks that thought I was a phenomenal supervisor and I thought that I was not a good supervisor and I had some between like I was on the bell curve not. I was and I think I say that just for the reality of Not everybody was a fan of SSO. Recent show was in the Army. I had folks that thought I was great. I would argue that they were the best agent so I had in my mantra today. Them was, you know, here's your left and right limits. Go forth.
I expect you to go forth and Conquer and do good things. I will have your back. Stay within these lines. If you screw up, I will be standing there with you. And I'll take the black. Fortunately, nobody ever really got any big trouble there. But like, they were running down and having a great time, the folks that were not running and gun and or that I was struggling with. I am a person that will have those very difficult conversations of You said you were going to do this on your
performance plan? You didn't do any of them. How do I rate you as meeting the standards? When you don't perform anything that you say, you're going to perform, those are difficult conversations. And it's hard for anybody to leave that conversation and feel like that supervisor is awesome, right? It's more of That dude's a dick. Yeah. And as a supervisor, that's gotta be tough too. It is because you're like, look, I don't want to rape people poorly know, but it's not only do it.
It's doubly tough and you're the SRA because I have no peers right out there, it's just me. Like there are no other GS4 teams for me to go and hang out with, with were there more than one Squad, but only one, you're the only 14, or was it? There was one. So both ours were all just under the Quarter Lane at all Squad. And that's kind of, well, that's probably more common for some rais, but somebody's will actually have two swabs will have more than one 14.
So you got like a peer, you're like, you know, you're first among equals. Certainly you can talk and you have like, hey, I'm seeing this. It's just you just me. Yeah, my closest pier was down in Boise, which is one of those areas where there was a criminal ssra, and then you had a national security, SSA doing great. Criminal. Yes. And SB supervisor had some, had some issues that will come right here in a minute. All right, so I've been there
for several years. There was some interesting personalities within the law enforcement community, We had, you know, when I first got there that the sheriff of the county that sits around Coeur, d'Alene could not be in the same Kootenai County, could not be in the same room as the Coeur. D'Alene police chief and vice versa. Oh wow. They were on speaking terms the US attorney's office had three a USA's in their Quarter, Lane branch office once considered a supervisor, reposition or branch
manager. There were she was known for bringing state and local officials into that office and screaming at them. So, there were some, you know, non-communicative relationships going on there too, and you have liaison and these agencies, right? So the state agencies are the Sheriff's Office, you have Elias on the worked in there that were trained by the FBI that would be in those know, I mean, part of being the ssra is you're the
liaison. So you gotta have those Partnerships, you know, I in in a perfect world, it would be with the chief for the sheriff, with the reality of it is particularly in a place, like North Idaho, where the bureau is not always looked upon in a favorable, right? Um, you know, and Ruby Ridge is still like a talking point in most Sheriff elections up there. Yeah. I didn't always develop a relationship with the sheriff because maybe the sheriff wants to keep the FBI at arm's length.
And I can understand that I can understand why. Because there are, there are politician they have to get elected. So I would work and build relationships wherever I could build relationships. Regardless, it was just, I'd never quite seen a law enforcement like that. And I say that haven't worked in Richmond Virginia, which was the capital of Confederacy, the city of Richmond is 85%. African-American, there's just very interesting Dynamics in that area.
Hailed in comparison to some of the Dynamics said was in North Idaho regardless pushing forward and kind of get into the the meat and potatoes of our conversation for today. In 2000 or 2022. So coming off the heels of covid. Coming off the heels of the black lives matter protests, Coeur d'Alene had had during the black lives matter protest what they referred to as gun delaying which is take your guns for a walk and downtown Portland. So that Tifa doesn't come and burn the town down.
And I think for perspective for your audience, I can't necessarily rationalize this but for North idahoans There is nothing scarier than the idea that antifa is going to come to your town and going to turn it to dust. And there was just that constant Rumor Mill of there's going to be a truckload of antifa coming to Sandpoint Idaho. Bonners Ferry Idaho. Yeah.
Places that folks that are in antifa probably have never never heard of it. They're gonna bring Seattle and Portland with them and they're gonna Burn It To The Ground. Yeah. So in Quarter Lane, the natural response was armed citizenry. And in Idaho, you know, open carry is very, very much legal, if not encouraged. And, you know, Google it, you'll see images of folks, walking their guns down Sherman Avenue. all right, so 2022. There is a plan to lgbtq Pride event in the city park in June.
We had been like some public spats back and forth between groups that were opposing, the lgbtq movement or making some Fairly outrageous, you know, comments to the media and on their social media feeds you know, we were also we the FBI and law enforcement was becoming aware of other chatter but none of it was specific and probably only focus that are in law enforcement in the bureau can understand the difference between like a specific threat and a generalized threat, we
didn't have a specific threat against an individual, or against a group. Either way, we had comments about armed, drag queens that we're going to show up and we had comments from, you know, if they want, you know, if the lgbtq movement wants award, let it be here kind of a deal. So we were blister. Yeah, so the My office was doing what the FBI do, which is share that information within policy with the people that need to know that the Sheriff's Office,
the police department. So, the Court Lane Police Department stands up a command post and his effectively all hands on deck for that event. There is the counter eventually called gun. Delaine 2. They changed that to North Idaho to prayer. You know, lgbtq events. I was asked to be in the command post, I was and give them that we didn't have any specific threats. I didn't have any of my folks working that day, but I had asked several of them not to
drink. In case something happened, I could recall the man but that I would be in the command post with my peers and I'd be sharing information out and if they got information from a former or something like that, get it to me and I'll share it appropriately. It's what we did. So over the course of the day, you've got all these individuals downtown carrying guns, everything is peaceful, there's a couple of misdemeanor disturbing a piece of rest individuals.
Two individuals in particular, you know, Pro lgbtq were arrested for disturbing the peace in the streamer charge. The. Dispatch that oh the dispatch gets a 911 call of hey there's like 20 dudes. Getting in the back of a U-Haul box truck. I got bunch of polls and they look like a little army. Well. The command post had also been in receipt of. Intelligence from another Police Department. We've been unnamed, we'll say out on the west coast of Hey, Cortana Lane FYI.
You've got 20, 25 legit antifa for in your town and they're Ready to be gangsters? So again, so the context of there's nothing scary for people in North Idaho than antifa coming to town. Here's this intelligence saying that there's antifa Coming to Town, the police department, shares. Portland Police Department. Chairs from me and I'm like, well, that's news to me, but I'm not gonna say that, it's either, right or wrong.
It's not in one. Call comes in and we all kind of look at each other in the command posts like Maybe antifreezer about that, kind of goes unsaid. Police Department. Finds you all, pulls it over and they get 31 individuals come out of the back. Now this news just to be clear. Yes. No specific environment or no specific threat, you get a report from a West Coast agency saying hey these people here you have a 911 call that aligns with the information from the and all
of that is left wing antifa. That's what the expectation was at that time and the command post. Yes, I've never heard that before. Yes, Joe, have you ever heard that? No. This event got a lot of play as usual about to explain what I said before on this deal is that there's a lot of false flags that get created on antifa and that it's easy. You look at January 6, you look at what happened. On January 6th. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of chaos and Chaos favors
the people. So the nobody knows who the you're going to get to, who they are butcher from. Nobody knows really who they are, which leads you down the, I don't think that's true. Actually, I mean, people in the public, don't know, but people that pay attention right study this stuff and do it for a living. They know who they are because one they've been named. They've been unmasked and you know their Manifesto and all that it's publicly there. They're at every March for Life,
I've seen them. They look like idiots. I mean I've seen them out of the March for Life. When I was in DC and you're like, they're not part of us, they're wearing face masks, they're doing things. They're not what people here are doing to protest abortion. That's not what's going on. They're not that unknown, but they are kind of a boogeyman and they get this like rap because there's, I actually think they encourage that. I think they get a kick out of people say that because it's
probably good for recruiter. They're in for propaganda like that is their Mantra. All right. Okay. Yeah. Truck gets pulled over individuals, get pulled out and in the command post, the Coraline does not have a lot of
CCT cameras. We're actually watching a Twitter live feed from somebody that was believed to be an antifa member out of Portland. So, She is over in the park, this is live streaming and she sees the commotion half a block away and walks over with her phone in his live stream and we're in the command post watching it and it's like that doesn't look like antifa. With these idiots right there and they're in, khaki pants, they're khaki pants mostly blue
shirts, you know, tan hats. You know, they've got these homemade little Shields. They've got all these flags, they got the face, they've got, you know, a little Gators on their face and Anyway, it gets back to the command plus so that the chief of police the sheriff. Like, you know, the Head Shed shows up over there, he get back to the command. Plus the chief police said, everybody's going to jail and
police decision. Like, I don't know who these guys are there going to jail so they all get arrested for a misdemeanor. Quote-unquote, conspiracy to Riot which importantly is under the disturbing this piece statute. It's a misdemeanor charge and it could be conspiracy to disturb the piece. All right. In the command post, we quickly kind of figure out that not antifa. It's this group called Patriot front. Obviously, how much did you know about them?
At that time, very little actually, like, you know, we had seen some of their propaganda around, like, I had passed that around, but it's stickers. So when I say propaganda, you know, you would see these little stickers would show up around town or they had put some bigger stickers on like some power boxes and Post Falls. Excuse me. And in Coeur d'Alene, but that's not a federal crime, you know, vandalism a property, you know, like putting stickers up on
stuff. So it was this is the part that I want you to hone in on specifically. So people understand, yes, what and what is not. It's not a federal crime to put up stickers. Correct vandalism is not a federal crime. Now, could it be a city misdemeanor that they put a sticker on? A public light pole? Yeah, maybe And I had seen some individuals, one evening and I had reported it. Who police department they disappeared before an officer could respond?
But again, it's like, you know, How many you know I'm not you know I go back and talk to my terrorism guy and it's like, yep it's a patriot front, you know, they're this group that shows up and they protest this and they protest that and they've got all these videos on line. um, so This is a Saturday event, this happens. I do my due diligence. I pass this information up the chain and everybody is like Zach. Success. You were there, we're in front of the threats.
We reported it quickly you know, there was there was no big there there right? There's no violence, you know, but again from internal FBI politics perspective of, you know, looking like we're on the ball. You got an FBI supervisor in the command post sharing intelligence is real-time sharing that up the chain. You know, that's perfectly. Well, the visibility good, no action taken. Don't cost to, you know, a
constitutional rights violated. Everybody might email to the asex on that was Jobs that bullet, right? Because like there was no there. There was like That was interesting, right? Because from a minute it was like, who are these? What, you know what? What like Kabuki theater. Yeah. So, all right. So, you know, We had an assistant us attorney was, was at the lgbtq event. I knew that she was going to be there. I was aware that she had a child going through tradition and all
that is fine. And I'd reached out to that individual via text and just said, hey are you well before this box truck thing showed up and said, hey are you at the event? You said, I am. I'm hanging out. Do you want me not to name this person? Although we've done it before. I'm not gonna drop names because my Mantra with this is it's just the facts of it. I'm I, you can do whatever you gonna go read. They're Gonna want to read about this and sure there are stories that are written.
Tracy, does have a she did show up online, quite a bit, so we can talk about lateral. It doesn't have to be on this. You can just stay tuned. We'll give it to you out there. You can also through my Twitter feed because we've named her before, but it's not relevant to your particular story because you're just looking at it. As here's a person that work with Factor facts. Actually facts. Doesn't really care about anybody's feelings.
Would you say? That when somebody has, let's say a child involved in some kind of a protected group and that protected group is doing a demonstration or March that that person has at least some conflict of interest when it comes to representing the federal government, but that makes sense or No. Yes, listen. I will say that that individual has Perjured themselves. Well, In the same way that if somebody was doing like a guns,
right situation? And you happen to be a person who is associated with the owner, the operator of a Firearms manufacturer. You might be a little bit conflicted in that because that's just not you have skin in the game at that point. Like you have a, a position that is not agnostic. When it comes to the federal government's, you know, sort of job my understanding was, and
shared by others. Was that this attorney was there for personal business, because of personal skin in the game, to your point, in the lgbtq movement, which is fine. You're totally allowed to have 100% a lot to do that. In my communication, with this individual was simply words of
caution. Well, before the box truck, you've got dozens of people walking around with guns, don't know whose side, they're on and it's just tense and my comment was just exercise caution because, it's, it appears tense. I'm going to command posture there. It appears very tense and her response was to send me the picture of a guy with a longer in the park. I'm like okay. Yeah, Rob, that's an acknowledgment seen some of that um, Anyway, pressing on again. So my right wrong or indifferent.
The way I have handled this in my previous interviews is It's all about the facts, I don't name drop. Public servants, quote unquote. Because you know, whether I think they did their job, right? Or they did me wrong. You say consistent, I stay consistent and they are public employees. If they were politicians, like I dropped the name Josh hurwitz. He Is the political appointee as the US attorney for the District of Idaho. He is not just a public servant. He is a politician, he's a
political appointee. I will drop that name not maliciously, but when it comes to aligning facts with an individual, I will drop that name everybody else. Even though these people have as you said perjure themselves which is not worked out really well for, you know, and I just want to point that out as a moment of character because I
think this is consistent. I have a different sort of burn everybody down but you took me a little while to get spun up and when you have your wife you know go get made homeless and you're you know just what I know. You know. This thing that there is family that drags on you and it actually does it's it's physically painful how you
translate that. I think that you do an admirable job especially if you're consistent on it and that is that you're like look I'm saying things that I know are true. You're all so accountable for every round you send down range 100% and you've acted in that way because I've watched I've listened, you are remarkably moderated. Despite having a real serious personal interest in this, and that's a big deal. This is we thought we had an FBI agents. That's why we're calling that.
And the second thing is that, when we started talking, you were real cautious of saying anything to me, probably, because you saw what I had to say, which is fair. Well, I didn't know exactly. And you were exactly the person that I would expect somebody who I didn't know that worked in the FBI to be. Like it's like thanks for calling. You know, I'll let you know. And it was arm's length. It was very fair and I was like,
you got to respect somebody. That doesn't just jump out there and say, oh, you can help me. You want to like, hurt some feelings. Let's do that, because there was a process you were going through and you've been going through for a long time. So anyway, ultimately, I never spoke with you substantively. I never spoke with you or any other member of the media until I was 100% fired. Yeah, the only conversation I had that is there anything I can do to help you need anything, right?
Which was just one guy who'd been kicked out to another guy who was going through. It was about to get, who was that? So, Rory. All right. She's walking around, she's walking around with the arrests, take place, you know, I push up this just happened, you know. The events continuing monitoring
the situation, you know? Missed that bullet, whatever that was, and well, by the end of the day, it's things are starting to spin up because you're getting all the media reports of it. This particular ausa is hit me with, hey, is your phone blowing up? Because my phone's blowing up and I'm like, yeah, I mean, I've sent some stuff up the headquarters.
Well, by the next day, you know, I spent the entire day working from home, creating update, update update to headquarters because, again, it's a Sunday, it's reaction mode. The we did at that point open what's considered a guardian assessment which is like the very base level. All you need is an official purpose reason to open it. So that the bureau could run is authorized then to run database
checks our own database checks. And I think this is something maybe important for American assistance to understand. Yes, the bureau does have databases of its own reports. We don't have files on everybody. There isn't you know we are not allowed by law or by policy to just Hoover up all this information. But when you go out and conduct investigations, those reports get saved and that gets put into a database.
You can't search an individual's name for that database just because you feel like it, you have to have a legitimate lawful reason to do it and assessment is the lowest level of Investigation. All you have to have is a legitimate purpose. So the legitimate purpose here was bunch of individuals. Got arrested. We want to know if they're in the FBI holding, because the bureau is always scared to death. That somebody goes and does something like a terrorist
event. And, you know, there's the perception that we were holding the football. When this is the, they were on the right thing, which I always push back against. And I know you will as well because it's an unfair assessment, just because the FBI has Your name in a database. They have your name in a database and they have mine and I'm sure they have Joe's. If anybody reports something it pops up the fact that matter is is if you're in the record-keeping system, it's not
necessarily always derogatory. It just might be that someone. I mean I found guys names that wrote letters to George W. Bush and said you should make me a US citizen because I'm very important to the academic community and I'm reading this going, like, why do we even have this written in crayon? Well, it was written. It was typed up.
It was somebody sent it over the White House, the White House sent it over to the FBI and so it got immortalized forever in the final and you're right, okay, whatever non derogatory, so assessment, get assessment filed gets opened databases are getting run and you're doing all the names.
All 31 of these guys. Doing all 31 names are getting run like initially it's the radio room or the controller room in Salt Lake City and then I get the Boise office to go in and open up the file and run some additional database checks, send off some preservation letters to like social media companies and stuff. Like all right, if we end up going there, let's preserve some of this stuff. So I'm riding these updates who these people are.
What happened in the meantime, the quarterly Police Department is executing a couple of search warrants based on their misdemeanor charges for three vehicles that were associated with these people. So one of them is the box truck were when they did search incident to arrest took, everybody's stuff and through the box truck and then seized it
during the search of the truck. the attorney's office however, is We want to charge these mofos was something Federal and I'm like, okay, what you got and, you know, it's like the wander list of charges. And but by the by Monday, Reality sets in and this female he would say that we previously refer to communicates with me. Yeah, so there's not really going to be any federal charges here. Yeah. Was that in writing or was that in? So that's communicated.
In both text messages and you know, like over the phone. Can you but can you meet with my here out of Boise? Whose another female ausa that specializes in National Security investigations and prosecutions? Can we have a conference call tomorrow morning? So, so, this is Monday going into Tuesday, what I had, authorized, at that point going into Monday morning after all the updates.
After, now being well-versed in the FBI's investigative efforts into this group and these individuals and their Blatant Communications from the FBI of hey Zach, we know this group. There's no there like, they go to extreme lengths, not to do anything violent. So everybody take a deep breath, here's what I want to. This is what I've always known as well. Can you say that again? Very specifically about Patriot front, we get constant online,
oh, they're feds. They dress like, feds, they don't even change the uniform from Quantico, why would it be? And of course, everyone's going to, you know, I think my audience is smart enough to listen to what this man has been saying this. You know, if you listen to Zach, you should listen. He's like a really straight shooter, it's been my impression for two plus years. But there's a reason why the FBI doesn't care about this group and it's not because they created the group that's been my
impression. A lot of his come from background information from folks in your office but carry 100%. No, they're not. They're not former FBI agent. Why are they not there a clown show that has their own Political perspectives. They have got their own desire to create propaganda videos. A lot of his probably for recruitment. It is a real simple hats. They're real to employee know but would it be fair that because you've read their Manifesto on sure white nationalism.
Yeah. So not necessarily premises but like nationalism where they think there's supposed to be an ethno State. Yeah, I mean they certainly promote that. I mean look, they're very, it's not like they protest everything. They protest satanic Cults, they protest black lives matter, they protest lgbtq they protest occupy ice events. So there are across the board with what they protest against and then they have their old, their own protests, right?
They have different chance so like strong border, strong Nations, whatever. Again, point of it all is they're not happy. I it is protected speed, not FBI employees of any kind. They're not associated with the bureau. Why they dress in similar stuff to our Academy? I have no idea. I feel like they probably do it specifically be and maybe because you take the perspective of there's no such thing as bad media. So, you know, they've got a
website. They put all they video everything that they do, you know, to include their vandalism stuff like if they're going to go up and spray paint Patriot front on an underpass somewhere, like they video and they put it out there. Obviously somebody thinks that school because they've got people in their group. So I quickly was getting spun up on that. It what? I without divulging.
FBI techniques. What I will say is the FBI lawfully investigated allegations against this group and against individuals in leadership of this group to include individuals that were arrested in quarter Land by the coordinate police department. And every single one of those investigations were they know where the line is, they will walk up to it. And if anybody at anybody within the group advocates for going over it, they get kicked out.
Did that come from from DC? Came from FBI headquarters that domestic terrorism operations section. So counter terrorism division within the FBI that came from the field offices that was like, hey you should talk to special agent, you know, snuffle off against he looked at this group for a while. You can look at his closing EC Says, all the techniques that they used and their findings. Yes, that's incredible discipline though.
I mean think about the fact that the Zero Tolerance on somebody who was stepping over the line and I'm sure you guys did this in the FBI. You looked into his funding him and you found, you know, we, I just wanted to dig into the covers with these guys and you found that there were ngos or actually paying people that were in there and they had an enormous number of people that work for non-profit organizations that were part of this group. So, That was kind of a strange scratch your head.
Why would this person be getting paid by this organization? So there's the same type of thing that antifa does where you had nonprofits that were paying those people. You also had the same thing that could be said about the About the Patriot front, they had people that were working in nonprofits that had what I would call a you know, made-up job. That we're getting paid. And I only know this, I can't
tell you how I know. But I I know this for classy but you know these things I mean this isn't this isn't new to you and so you have to look at the the parallel between the two and go. Okay?
So I'm not saying they're the same, I think some movements are after Turf, some movements are Grassroots, they're gonna be money behind them, where there are real Believers in a movement and there's other people that are there to move the moving along and they're getting it set of eyes people, that's really incentivized. We're getting incentivized from groups that were Were largely considered left lately. So how do you have Patriot front?
Guys are getting paid by ngos that are somewhat left-leaning or at least the leadership in those organizations are and look at what antifa is doing and so and I'm not the FBI. So I didn't have the same resources, but I certainly got to the minute to the bottom of it and a couple cases. So this is where it goes through. This is where you get the, are they feds, right? I mean, I can just tell you where it came from. I don't believe, and a fundamental distrust in the
system at this point. But the broader piece and this is the reason why I honed in on an earlier about putting down and doing vandalism. It's not a federal crime know. And if you want an FBI that does the job of the FBI, that means that they investigate federal crime. Yes. Right. That's what I want. I don't want anything beyond that either. It's like oh, you don't like them or their ideology neither do. I that's not part of this job though.
That's why you being fair. And I said it very specifically. That is the job of the supervisor, here's your left and right boundaries. This is what the Constitutional allows you to go do. Stay within that and I'll step in your space. I was just adding a narrative to the people themselves. I know and how that there's so many people that are going to be, basically, they're like
everything is an option. If you think that you're seeing this op, like there are things going on and some of them are not going to be immediately obvious. The question is, is, are there bad actors that are happening in your office? Do you think guys in your office were part of a cover-up where people, you know, incentivizing this movement? Are they out there? Trying to stir the pot? Like I never saw it and I don't think you did from everything you've said so far.
No, again, it's is there evidence of a federal crime, right? He quickly came to like is the answer to that was no. So, you know, I was having lots of conversations with my executive management again because of all the media coverage, you know, this was getting briefed up to the seventh floor, the FBI which is, you know, the direct, you know, the deputy director, executive assistant, director level, why? I think this blew up so big but just because of the stupid media coverage.
And again, it's, you know, the bureau is again, you know, always cognizant of being caught with his pants down. So there's that reflect, you know, reactive nature to the bureau but again, everybody was happy. I was there we were sharing information. There was no there there. Yeah. And everything coming out of FBI headquarters was a particularly breath. We know this group, It was not going to be right. They were not arrested with sharp pencils. There's no knives.
There's no guns. There Are No Bananas. There are purchased metal pieces of conduit that they've attached Flags to. And these little homemade Shields, they have cameras, they have cell phones, they have a bullhorn, they've got a little plan of what they're going to do with a speech staple to it. And they've got a commercial Lee purchased smoked device, which is also present in almost all their videos, red, blue, yellow, whatever. Again, you know, they think they're pretty cool in their own
YouTube videos. So RPG. The. My. So again, everybody's on the same sheet of music, except for kind of the US attorney's office. At this point, we're talking about Monday. So three days after this event, I've been working non-stop just fine. That is my job, no problem. There's agreement in what we open is a 343 Victor case, which is a assistance to local law enforcement technical case.
It is not a predicated investigation, which means you are not allowed to do predicated Investigations out of it is simply a conduit for the FBI to offer a local investment, a local agency technical support. So accordingly Police Department, right wrong or indifference had opened their own investigation, right? They had made a misdemeanor arrest, which police officers do every day across the United States. Sometimes, they're good arrest. Sometimes they're not good arrest.
It wasn't my position to cast that judgment. They made a decision and I am trying to play well, in my sandbox, I've got a quarterly Police Department. That is very touching. Again, it used to be the sheriff in the police. Chief couldn't be in the same room together and for some context like right now today, the city of Portland is being sued by one of its former police captains. In Coeur d'Alene, there are two captains The one Captain there is no longer employed.
There is suing the city of Coeur d'Alene because the chief and the other captain wanted him to lie in an internal investigation about them. Having secret recordings of meetings with the city. Board members. He said, no thanks. I won't lie. So he was honest. And said he was aware of these secret recordings. He went back, you know, they said well did you tell him what we wanted to tell me? He's like no, I told them the truth.
That should be what you want me to tell them and then they just asked him endlessly until he quit. He brought all that information to the city. The city did internal investigations validated that there were secret reporting's validated that this Captain told the truth validated that he was harassed to the point of him quitting. And yet those individuals were still in charge of the police department.
And so at some point, yeah, the city of Portland shell out millions of the captain for that that type of treatment. So I say that not to throw a bunch of dirt on Quarter Lane but from the standpoint of what's my motivation at this point, my motivation is I've got a police department made a decision. They didn't miss him in arrest, they've got all these electronic devices that they're going to want to search. The FBI can assist with that.
I've told them that, hey, I'm I can appear that there's a there there. On the FBI side, I am not a coordinate police officer. You guys can make your own decisions about your misdemeanor charges. But I can support you. In searching all these electronics and they're like, great. Thank you. We don't really need help with this investigation. We've got it.
Misdemeanor, moving on with life, they had asked if I wanted to be a purpose of that investigation just to be totally clear, is if they said, hey, we need to get into this phone. We need celebrate, we need something. We need some kind of physical capability that you guys have. And we have the PC, you guys would be able to loan people to do it. So yes. So they were going to write a state search warrant on, you know, on that misdemeanor charge.
I have provided them. The language going to that warrant. So that those phones could be taking out of state and could be searched by an FBI employee. It's just simple language needs to be boilerplate into their sort of Bureau does this all the time across the country? This would be like a cart or a cast or something like that. Or somebody would come in and do like a sophisticated capabilities. Yeah, just do a phone number. So again, the bureau's got numerous machines to do phone
numbers. The Coraline police department has one for, you know, 30 plus devices. So I mean simply Logistics is all the offer is good. They're not asking for anything else. Everybody is happy. and, We're moving on. However, this is where things go sideways, because attorney's office have that meeting with me Tuesday morning it's virtual and they're like we would like to do a federal search warrant for those devices, and I'm like, well, Stand by one.
I'm gonna bring you guys up to speed again on what the bureau has done looking into this group in the past and I read to them. Closing ECS of like investigative technique result, investigative technique results. Non-violent non-violent nonviolent nonviolent protest, protest, protest protest lawful off a lawful constitution protected. Know like, yeah, we still want to do a federal search warrant.
I'm like, I don't see what violation know like, well, we're going to do the conspiracy to Riot Federal rights statue. I don't See that like okay well can we have a greater meeting between us attorney's? Office doj's is wanting us to do this too and your management team and I'm like, okay like we'll put it together for you. Who do you want to be there? So it was like my executive management and it was FBI
counterterrorism division. So if you kind of terrorist Vision joins that the next day and their perspective is we know this group There is no evidence to support a federal Riot statute from a probable cause standpoint to search their devices. So they're backing your play.
Yes. Okay. but the US attorney's office standpoint is no no, we're leading this investigation which for those out there U.S attorney's Office does not have statutory authority to investigate special counsels can be given statutory authority to investigate but otherwise investigative Authority lies within the law enforcement entities of FBI DEA ATF US, Marshals, homeless security, investigations, Secret Service, Etc. Can you got the perspective of occasionally?
They'll bring you a case you obviously have discretion on that. Can you kind of talk about the interplay there because you know, brought it away so cases can be brought to along forcement like the FBI by the US, attorney's office in two ways, one they become aware of information and they say hey just like any other intake, like a complaint system. Would you consider investigating this? We think if you can prove it up, we'd like to charge it or they will do a direct adoption of a
state investigation. Such as like narcotics. Like, you got interdiction stops on the highway, you know, they get 10 pounds of meth in a car stop, they call the US attorney's office because they've got a direct connect their your strings off, yet, we'd like to take that in my experience. You send over an agent to go and where my experience, these turns out, this is always happy to take from the from the locals but they never want to rely on the locals to get ready for prosecution.
They will want a federal agency to come in and do cleanup. And that's when you end up with like a case File from a local law enforcement agency, you sit in front of Federal grand jury as an FBI agent, you're reading through, okay. Officer said this, this detective said this, so you're adopting the case. And and that's my point to you, is that, or I guess to the audience is more like this is not a crazy idea that they would want to take a case on but you
have discretion. Yes. Because you are the supervisor, you're the, you know, and then obviously headquarters, I have to approve what would be a predicated investigation, which is the case opening and then all the techniques are going to fall underneath your name signed on. As the supervisor, yes, there's an agent associated with it. Who's going to be working in the case and you were the one who
said? Yes, I agree that this is a predicated law enforcement purpose under the following reasons and we have a reason to do it as an FBI so understandable. But there is some low bars there. It's open like a preliminary investigation and so forth but you've quickly got this, you
know my own domestic terrorism. Headquarters is saying there's no there there's no evidence to support a probable cause statement they were going to write because they protest all the time with the same stupid regalia they show up in box trucks all the time. But you got the US turns out saying, no, no. We're leading this investigation and you can't tell us that there isn't probable cause until we've had a chance to write it down. Oh, so that meeting ends with no
real consensus. Other than Zach will meet on a break-off meeting with a smaller group again to try to find a way forward. And then my special agent in charge of the Salt Lake division. Just simply says, Zach, find a way to work it out with us, attorney's office. Thanks for the leadership boss. You're Roger. So I meet and this is where Find a way to work with you, Australia. So I found a way to work with the attorney's office, which was
their perspective was listen. We're going to write this. You guys can chill. We have questions, we'll ask you. You guys just can then just review it and decide if you were comfortable, a testing to the warrant. So, again, it's like we'll do what the US attorney's office DJ. Well, we'll do all the heavy lifting for you. You guys, you know? Enroll for it. So again, it's like I said, okay, Jeremy Brown.
I mean the whole idea. You gotta wrap up in the deal where they searched and then charge them something completely different. What they found. You've got at that point maybe what 14, 15 years of experience in the bureau. Yes. How many times have you seen doj? Say we're going to write the the affidavit you're going to just sign it when you get it never. Before there were some of that with the j6 investigations, obviously, we saw from my experience in the eastern district of Virginia.
The Western District of Virginia and the District of Idaho. Agents ask for warrants agents, write warrant affidavits probable cause affidavits they get proofread by the ausa's, assistant us attorneys and then they get jointly presented to a judge and the agent swears to the contents. The factual nature of that probable cause statement, I've written dozens and dozens and dozens of them, everything from search warrants to criminal complaint.
Are you always arrest on a criminal complaint and then go to Grand Jury for indictment after the fact. Interesting. So that's not that common in the FBI or at least a lot of field offices. That's not that common criminal complaints. All right District Virginia is known as the rocket docket, they go really fast they actually adhere to the timeline of you know 60 days after a Raymond you're going to trial. So doing something on a criminal complaint.
Kind of buys you another two weeks for the arraignment time frame. Interesting. Anyway, And it doesn't make you a slave to the grand jury schedule. Because grand jury is usually only meet once or twice a month, depending on your district. And I can get a criminal complaint, I can get a public house affidavit for a criminal complaint before judge.
Any day night of the week, particularly in Eastern Virginia, where they ran an actual like that of Duty Master, it could always get one didn't matter when, as long as you as Attorneys Office was on board that that was the direction we were ready to charge. We were preparing for trial. Yeah. But it was like, boom. Criminal complaint. Get it done. Will grand jury next week and we'll be Off to the Races?
Yeah. All right, so I say that from the standpoint of like I am very comfortable with what a probable cause affidavits. Yeah. Right. Very comfortable and the two agents, which was 50% of my Quarter Lane office that I had assigned to assist the US, attorney's office, with whatever questions that they had. Were both experienced criminal and one was also criminal and domestic terrorism agents.
When I say experience, they both had spent five years in Indian Country, so legitimate crimes search warrants for crime scenes. On repeat, so transactional. So for folks have, if you don't know this, we've talked about a little bit but Steve did that as well. For I think six or seven years it's Major Crimes. A physical violence is being like a detective in a city. Except the city is an Indian reservation.
And there's non-stop crime, sexual, assaults, rape homicide, all kinds of ugly stuff happening regular repeated. And I know at least one of those two agents pretty well went to the academy with South. So yeah so these are people that know what they're doing. Yes. That's the way. It's a problem called statement was. So anyway, This is towards the end of that week. It is briefed up. To the deputy director of the FBI.
Why my Sac from my briefing notes of The FBI has an assistance to local law enforcement case we are assisting local law enforcement. The US attorney's office is expressed interest in getting a federal search. Warrant their writing it for the purpose of assisting local law enforcement in searching. Those electronic devices that is briefed up to the deputy director. I say that because everybody likes to ignore that later on in the story and this is a misdemeanor case and this is a
misdemeanor case. So Saturday morning. So it's not a week after the arrests Doja Office. Deliver this draft affidavit. My agents, get it, they work on it over the weekend, they review it.
They don't talk to me that much, but I see some emails like they're reaching out to some of the other case agents that have previously investigated these individuals or the group, Getting spun up getting, you know, getting hard looks at it and then I get a look at the next week and I have some conversations with the agents and how uncomfortable they are with what's in there. Pictures of January 6th or in the affidavit. What this group was not known to be at. The capitol or anywhere near
Washington DC on January 6th. None of the third one individuals arrested were suspected of being at the Capitol on January 6th, yet there's photographs in the affidavit comparing them to individuals, breaking windows. And so forth at the Capitol. Emotional. It's an emotional affidavit. It is a the facts are the facts which is simply. These guys are arrested out of a box truck with item ABC and D. Period. But then, it's Turning written. Conjecture.
That says, well, I Ate it. AKA my special agents, believe from my training and experience that this smoke grenade, is there to cause panic and fear within a crowd, I believe, as the train law enforcement officer here that these right at Shields are used to assault people. Just like they were using January 6th to assault law enforcement officers and break windows. So my agents review it, they edit it, they include additional information to include information.
They believe needs to be in there such as the number of protest events that these guys have been known to go to like 45 or something like that. In the last three years peaceful they did find one event that was somewhat not peaceful where they counter protested and occupy Ice event. They walked through the encampment kicked. Over a tenth knocked over a water cooler. You know, beat their chests and then walked off. No one was hurt. No, one was assaulted know.
You know, they didn't throw javelin's or Fireballs or any of that kind of stuff. It was a walk through kick the table over, you know, Said whatever they said and then it was like, all right guys we're leaving we're leaving, we're leaving in the old lift. But agents found that and put it in there. by that next week, they also had a conversation with The ausa and Boise. And that he was say asked them
Point Blank? Well, do you believe there's probable cause are you going to scrap this morning? And they're both said, no, ma'am. We don't believe there's probably cause, and no, I'm not comfortable saying that there is before before a judge, and I've seen the written testimony of folks that listen to that conversation the bullpen because I wasn't present and another Attorney in the room said, her hair was standing up on the back
of her neck. As she listened to an ausa disparage, and scream at FBI special agents for putting in exculpatory evidence. Into an affidavit and saying that she was going to have to go back and Wordsmith this thing. So this is Canal getting into the end of week two. I have communications ordered to me from FBI headquarters saying, they're aware that there might be some disagreement over this affidavit and the headquarters FBI at this point.
Once to make it clear, that they are not supportive of any agent, being pressured to attest to an affidavit that is factually inaccurate still on your team. They're still on Team America, and they compare that to the bureau has a long documented history of Agents, after the fox saying that, they were pressured to a test to warrants that they were not comfortable with testing to ARCA. Crossfire hurricane is placed in the email. That's in the threat you're
dealing with that in the email. Hey guys let's not repeat Crossfire hurricane like that. We're still got black eyes from that. So This is where the tide turns for me though. So by the end of that week, I
have a conversation with this ausa. and, It's yeah, I'm well where your agents are not comfortable testing to this, but I really think we're there and I think we should find somebody else to swear this thing up. And I think if we moved it down to the supervisor in Boise, we'd get this thing done. All right. Well, I don't know, I don't think their support for that in the bureau. I'm glad you recognized that my agents are not comfortable to testing to this. I'm going to go back and talk to
my team. And we'll come back and figure out where we're going here. So I message my assistant, special agent in charge and say, hey, I just had this conversation with AIO. Say, can we have a chat about this? What is think the responses? No thanks. You can summarize that conversation in an email and send it to us. We can think about it before we talk to you.
Why did he do that? Well, that's a great question because I'm like you want me to summarize a conversation with an ausa like that isn't against the loss on just rules but it's like not good practice and all. So it's a real specific thing when someone starts telling you to put it in righting 100%. And but they're telling me that, no, we're not comfortable talking to you right now because we I'm no longer on team, whatever their team is I'm no longer on their team FBI.
So they're wanting to be able to think about it digest it, and then they'll call me. So I'm like, okay, so I separate them. 100%. Yes, there it's, it's Fall Guy time. Yeah, so I do as instructed, it's a lawful order. I write up a summary and I send it with. Okay, you've got it. Can we talk about this now? Like we need to figure out where we're going here. Know.
Zach, we're not. Before we get on the phone and have another conversation about where this is going to go, you need to write up a plan with where we should go and email it to us. So The Weeknd think about it. What happens? I'm just I'm honestly I'm in disbelief because it's like this is pretty clear cut agents are not comfortable with this warrant. It's been two weeks. The PD could have had a warrant
A day after. We're slowing this down and you're smart enough to know you're walking into fire. Yeah. But what do I do about it? Right. You know I still have to abide by lawful instruction. I am covering my guys and like, you know, we're still quote unquote, helping the police
department, by delaying. This thing by two weeks when I made it clear in the early meetings like we can lawfully, execute a state search warrant and be lawfully present for the discovery of evidence of another crime. AKA a federal crime, right? We don't have to put the part in front of the horse here. Um, but again, that what? I feel to read the room, and I think I said that in my interview with Miranda Devine of, this wasn't about, looking
for evidence. This was about planting the flag of doj's doing something about white, nationalism against one of our favorite groups and You know, this is gonna happen on time by time. I thought, yes, you just said something really interesting. I think that everybody missed This is a stand against white nationalism. For one of our favorite groups. So, That's an interesting thing. You just said, yeah. Because then you're talking about favorite groups, who's the favorite group?
The lgbtq? Isn't it? Not which, in essence by comparison? I'm not putting words in your mouth. Sure, but I have studied I've watched her interviews. I've But oh I said this. I said Thank you before but It's like the same thing with Kyle like you stood up when it was most unpopular thing, right? Doesn't matter. In fact, I don't care about anybody knowing LGB back for facts and they should always be facts but the lgbtq LGB what IQ, what all that stuff. It's closely connected to this
other thing called antifa. sure, I mean, but again, it's They're not my favorite group but they're not might not favorited. But like, I don't care. There were a law group of citizens that every right to be whatever you want. And every right to be there in the park, you know, you know, with their, lgbtq proud of it. And I had supported that with sharing of intelligence to be there. Like, I had concerns for American citizens, you didn't
have favorites know. Yeah, if anything I was definitively not looking super positively at the Patriot front group. I'm like, these guys have cost me nothing but headaches, and they look like a bunch of idiots. There was you. All right, so I write another email as instructed of this is my recommendation. I make it clear. My agents have stated in the US attorney's. Office is recognized. They are not comfortable. A testing to the factual contents of this warrant.
So we have an option here. Two options. One. We support my agents. And we let the PD get its own search for him. And I said, hey I want the SEC to help me message that to the city because we've been sticking our finger in there for two weeks. And message that video streams office because they're clearly motivated with this thing. Yep, or if that is unacceptable, then we as the FBI need to regain some control. Here we management. Need to look at the facts of this and either.
Again, come to our conclusion that we independently agree with our agencies, there is no PC here. And or if we do think that there is PC, here is management. Then we FBI should write our own search warrant and either find myself or another agent that can write it. However, The court needs to know. That I've had agents reviewed permanent previous efforts to write a search warrant and they didn't feel like there's probable cause we need to be transparent with the courts.
That is our job. We don't play hiding things from the court. Now, I am that with. Can we please talk about this? Where are we going to go here? This is getting to be a little bit serious and I'm in this Penn State of like. This isn't complicated. Folks like right is right. Wrong is wrong facts or facts? We could let the PD get their search warrant tomorrow and we could be executing these search warrants, but again, I feel to read the room. It wasn't about the facts.
Was an about what evidence might be on those phones. It was about the act of planting a flag. And again, this is my personal opinion. Of reading the room and what I missed, and this ship was going to sail regardless. So do I get a response to that last email? No. No, and that's Friday night Saturday goes by Sunday, goes by Monday morning. The sac. So specialized in charge Salt Lake division is in my ra on a previously. Scheduled, you know?
Temperature check tour. I message the asec goes now Monday, can we talk about this? You bet Zach go to your office. so, I get called in for a phone, call with the three aspects in the council, the chief division counsel, And I get my butt handed to me reamed out. You shouldn't never have sent those emails. Those emails are going to be reviewed as prejudicial to any search warrant we ever do. So we're done here and it's your fault Zack. Like. All right.
Well, there's the Fall Guy that we were looking for but we're I was like, but to be clear we're done here. yep, no PD can get their own search for him like Roger that go out. Tell my two agents guys were told to stand down the city's. Gonna get their own search, warrant will get it out and they're all like God because they're under pressure doesn't matter that I'm trying to stand in the way like the pressure Seats past. They know what's going on.
They're not dumb, nope. So Special agent, charges in the office. This is a bit of a big thing in the news under all this pressure from doj. Do you think he brings it up with me? Know, do you think in I invite him to like our Monday morning Roundtable, kind of deal to think he brings it up? No. So when he asks, all right guys, so kind of talked to me about like what are some difficult
relationships? You deal with around here and it's crickets and my my squad table explain why that is though Like, why he's asking know why nobody ever asked? Nobody wants to answer this because again, it's the elephant in the room. But, again, I'm the type of guy that will have that uncomfortable conversation.
So I just like sir. Well, the obvious elephant in the room is some of the difficult conversations or difficult relationships with this us, attorney's office, and he just kind of goes So all right, you guys have a great day. He goes on, and then he goes outside my building and spends like the next hour plus on the phone and then I get a call back. All the same assistance, special agents in charge and chief justice in California on the phone with me.
Zach, you'll just regard that previous instruction. You will continue to support the US, attorney's office, while they redraft, the affidavit and your agents will review it for probable cause Okay, that's a lawful instruction. So I was like Roger go back out to guys were back on the sac. Always wanted to meet Partners. So there was a ninth Circuit Judge that has this Chambers and Coeur d'Alene phenomenal human being. I reach out to him. Sir. Can we come over as a seasonal?
Yep. Absolutely. Come on over, here's the time. So it's mid-afternoon I take the SEC over, we spent an hour and a half two in the fat. With this judge judge is a great supporter of mine and he's like, hey, you know, Sac snuffle off against you got a great agent here, Robert Ross. We're leaving and the sac is making it very clear. He wants to Courtland like coach coming off. Ty's coming off. He's getting ready. To get his Tahoe and I stop it.
I'm like sir. And we, please talk about this Patriot front search warrant matter looks right at me and he says Zack. Sorry, but I don't really know anything about that. So I'm leaving it to you in the a sack. I know. We're sorry about that. Bye. So then I call up, I get in my car drive back to the office. That's leadership in quotes. Why are they all gutless?
That's like I don't I don't know any other way to say it, but they none of them have any courage of conviction where they're like, yeah, maybe people might not well like, what I'm going to do, but I'm the guy who gets to. I'm just theoretically, this special agent in charge of the field office. And they never want to be in charge. It goes back to the culture thing that I talked about earlier about a failure of
leadership culture. It's just so like from the outside, people have no idea, you see these people, they want to take the press conference, they want to get out in front of the news cameras. They always want to get out there and brief up on what my guys are doing. But you notice the minute, like, guys, like a Steve Dano gets asked by a chrome, you know, member of Congress. Hey, tell me about the pipe bomb case. They're like, look, I'm just the guy in charge.
I don't actually know what's happening investigation. The minute that involves any responsibility, they run from it. And what you're saying? It's ubiquitous it's just so crazy that it doesn't matter who it is. I don't even need to know who that person is because it's the same one.
That was my essay. Sure. They're all the same that the same person, but here's the problem with everything that you said, I always like to look at what is isn't said not, what is said, it's like you walk up along, you do the same thing on investig. The spot that's the spot you're looking at for the crime committed or anything else, right? That's the the elephant in the room. Who is the person that is. Pushing the buttons.
Downstream to get to you. That is saying this is why there's a Fear Factor. There's something that's not being said in this. That there's one person pulling strings to make sure that there's an outcome that they wanted to have happen. And it's not the US, it's not the assistant us attorney. It's someone totally different above them. That's pushing it down this satisfies to be a doj main thing. So, Ultra speeding, my understanding belief.
Also, my belief, everything I know post fact, is it this juncture that Monday? It's the US attorney Joshua, the District of Idaho pushing on my Sac, who was a politician who is a politician, but the end of the week. It's Lisa, Monaco. The deputy attorney general, which is exactly why would assume it would go.
Because that's exactly the face that I was seeing when I'm here in the South. And that's so troubling because it's so predictable that the OJ May and for people who don't understand, Merrick Garland may be the face as the Attorney General. But the person who runs the FBI is the deputy director and the person who runs the doj has been Lisa Monica. So you have to look at this from the other perspective, this is organized crime.
I mean that's what it is. I mean when you when you open eyes the doj, I think this is one of the things the president Trump addressed in one of his executive orders when you weaponize the doj and you do. So in such a way to punish people Downstream, it's working those crumbs. No difference between that now Al Capone in my opinion and look I'm not putting words in your mouth but at some point You talk about that. It has to be the The culture of it. I mean this this is dangerous.
I mean what you went through is actually dangerous because that means that you're one of the cases that we get to see. You're one of the cases, we get to see. But the pervasiveness of this inside of our apparatus is more. I mean, how do you get to the bottom of that? It's not all the time. That's the crazy part, right?
Like, you saw it one time in 16 years, it just turned out to be like career fatal, but it's, but it's, but it's not every day and it's not every field office and it's not all the time and when it does happen, it's this. Yes. And they just go after you, you're the problem. Yeah, so all right carry on you've got Lisa Monaco. Now he's and you're in freaking Quarter Lane Idaho, which trampoline to understand. You have four agents, Man, Four Seasons. Quarterland.
I've got three in Lewiston. And then I've got a handful of support and task force rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. The Quarter Lane SS, the Quarter Lane ra. Where is that in the importance? For the national mission of the FBI for visibility just so but what do you think? What time 10 points? I mean it's just don't it. Well like we were primarily a Indian Country violent crime, maybe a little bit of drugs, a little bit of white collar stuff.
Kind of RA how many times were your case is making the directors Daily Brief, you think in a year. I mean it probably zero, you know, some of you know the again you know, the stove pipes in the bureau, you know some of the Indian country because we had a murder. We had an agent Squad agent that was shot just before I got there, you know, executing a search warrant so again but
violent crime stuff. But again this happens across the bureau like you know, something hits the media and the bureau reacts to it it gets to the dangers of it. The reaction when the culture is what the culture is, that reaction can be very bad in my case, it led all the way to, you know, Attorneys agents, perjuring themselves, obstruction of justice, and federal courts, Etc. So, I reach out to the ASAC assistant, special agent, charge. I can't get this to you, to talk
to me about this. He's like, well Zach. The US attorney. Is complaining about you to the sac that you guys are not Jews helping them, and giving them everything they want for this warrant. And I'm like, like, what sir? He's like, I don't know. Zach, it's your job to figure that out. Like, okay, so I get back to the office and I'm like, guys,
what's happening like well? Since you left, the phone's been ringing from the ausa with a laundry list of questions, we've been working on answering like, okay, Roger that. Well, I'm calling, they would say because supposedly they're complaining. she calls me back the next day and my It's just again, pretty well. Just point blank, it's listen. I understand there's been some complaints. You guys are supposedly wanting stuff.
There's clearly a miscommunication here because neither I nor my agents are aware of stuff that you've been asking for that. We haven't given. So when you want something, please email it to my agents. So we know exactly what it is that you want and then we can track that, we get it back to you. So then it's email email. I'm watching this course on. Let's go back and forth through my agency and I watch them do
their thing. I'm well aware that they're drafting a second version of Seth, David nothing I can do about it. Well, the communication from my leadership team. My management team to leadership off, they will. That's right.
Is that hey, once they're done, we want to know what status is your agents can review for PC. And we're done here, like review, for PC review, for PC review, for probable cause So by the end of that week, I see emails between my agents and a USA's where my agents are saying hey we haven't heard from you in a day. Anything else anything else that you need a was saying comes back. No affidavit looks great after everything you gave us.
It's back with doj. We're waiting for it to come back to us. We'll reveal it. Do our edits and then we'll send it to you as soon as we're done. That very same day. I now know that they're saying. Hey high, five FBI, thank you for everything. Josh hurwit is communicating up to doj. FBI is a real problem here. We're not going to get what we want out of them. We've got a real issue. Yeah. Um, And the same time that he is then having phone calls with them about that.
He's calling me. And saying. Hey, just want to say, thanks for everything you've done for us and, you know, we should be expected. We don't know exactly where we're going to get this warm, but it should be coming soon. And my responses. Okay, well please keep me in the loop and when this is all done, you and I are going to talk about this because this is never going to happen again. He's like, okay.
At that point, there was a rolling stone article that had come out about, you know, like the FBI's knowledge of patriot front and I'm like, have you seen this to him like Hey we're all supposed to get some doxxing threats like I'm having my age it's kind of you know, batten down the hatches on that front.
We've got kind of a checklist that they run for, you know, boxing threats, Etc. Because again there's that, you know, they're feds, you know, picture, France, feds and then it's, you know, they're going after right Wingers and Etc. So by the next week, a couple more questions come out. Um, you had had an incident in Boston with a patriot front, again, made news for an altercation with an African-American male there. And I reached out to the supervisor in Boston and he's like, hey Yep.
We're aware. We do have a guardian assessment open. We are also getting a ton of pressure from the Australians office out here to get these guys indicted. He's like, however word of caution, there's a very mixed Story coming out of this. So the police report, you know, came from the individual that said he was assaulted and got his finger cut.
But he's no longer Cooperative with us with the police department or even with the mayor of this trying to talk to him and our officers that showed up on scene, saw something very different. And we're we're trying to get to the bottom of that. I was like, okay. Check. Raj. All right, well by Wednesday of that week. So it's literally almost a month. After the arrest. Second draft comes down and I'm like guys reviewed independently, if you're comfortable with this warrant no problem.
You swear it out, I'll open a predicated case and we'll all move on with our lives. But if you're not comfortable with this warrant, no problem. You just got to tell me why. And we'll move on with our lives. They both come back. Want the main guy says, can I sleep on this? I'm like, sure. You want to go out and do some PT. He's like, yes please. So we just go out into the yard of the ra, we do some PT, we'll have some stress and I was like, hey man, go home. Sleep on it.
Come talk to me in the morning. So I'm obviously my phone's blowing up. Hey, they made a decision. Have they made a decision? I'm like, they're sleeping on it. They'll come back to me when they're ready. And they do independently they both the agents that I've had working on this for months come back to me and they're both say we we can't swear this out. This thing is missing, clear stuff. They've taken some exculpatory stuff out of it. They are way overstating, some other stuff.
This is just not an accurate resuscitation of the facts and I'm not going to put my name to this. Like okay fellas, go back to work. You got other work to do. I will message that up to my management team. Management team in Salt Lake will not accept that. The chief division, counsel's had had independent conversations with my two agents expressing the same concerns and that they were not comfortable with this half of David, didn't matter.
My point was, this is now twice. My agents reviewed an affidavit that they didn't write. And they've said that it is inaccurate and then they're not willing to support it. Well, why not? I'm like, you know, it reads, perfectly fine because you've had a whole team of attorneys riding it for a month but it is not Accurate, according to my agents who are the subject matter experts here, we don't have to be a subject matter expert to square out an affidavit. You do if it needs to be
accurate. And I was like, you know, you can read this whole thing. But it is not the premise of it is not accurate. In other words, like the theme here that these are a violent right-wing group and that they were conspiring conspiring to Riot. And skull crash here in Coeur d'Alene is not reflected in facts. It has to be brought together with conjecture in this affidavit. Can you, can you explain the danger of swearing out an
affidavit? That is let's say actually reads well but actually accurate can you read? Can you explain what that would do? These guys? Yes, so if you are effectively lying to the court, if you swear out and affidavit, it turns out you knew was false or was inaccurate or was misleading.
And if you Do that you career is toast because you're going to be put on a Brady list and you are not going to be able to testify in any future coaching for the rest of your career and you're probably going to get Oprah so officer professional responsibility is going to hammer you with something the FBI's internal investigation internal investigation and judication process so it's a current but again that aside my agents were not still just wrong it's like wrong it's against the
law. It is the judicial system is a scale, it is facts on one side. And its outcome on the other facts are facts. They don't care about, they don't care about your feelings, they don't care. If you're lgbtq, they don't care if you're white nationalists. The fact is a fact, and my agents were saying, the facts are not represented here. And I said, okay, in my front office is saying not okay. And my response was. All right, listen, this is twice.
This is real pressure. I've warned you guys about this last week. I warned my ASAP about the pressure that I was feeling to get this warrant done. And I've already said That I didn't believe you guys were gonna have my back. if my agent said no, I am not going to continue to instruct my agents to draft this thing because they're gonna figure out that they're going to draft the thing until the answer is. Yes, that's the point.
They're like, okay, fine, find another agent that will review it, and considering it out and I'm like, no. I have half my office to spend a month on this. No one else in the office has you're just want me to find an agent that little review. It said that reads. Well, no matter whether or not, it's all inclusive or not.
It just reads good that's what taking an agent that doesn't know you know is asked from a manhole cover as far as the facts go. And I said no. What I didn't realize is, they were calling my agents around me. Oh, and they were calling the agent specifically that disliked me the most and was closest to the ausa that had been at the lgbtq event. And had been instrumental in trying to get me removed from my position before so they knew who they were calling, but he too, excuse me. He said.
What about the exculpatory stuff? These other agents are saying was taking out and from Office like I don't think so we don't we're not aware of that. They're all calling the ausa that was the lgbtq of event and that's where it's well. You know, is actually a real problem up here. So, By the next day, I get a phone call. Zach, take it privately. Close your door in the office. The three assistance specialist in charge in the CDC and it's Zach, I don't think you realize
How much visibility is on this? This search warrant is now on Lisa Monaco's desk. The deputy Attorney General. And we've lost confidence in your ability, to lead the squad. Through this case, You will not talk about this case with the US attorney's office anymore, you will not send another email about this case, you won't talk about it amongst your squad, your squad won't talk about amongst themselves, they won't talk to the illustrations about anymore.
You will transfer this to the FBI FBI supervisor. Excuse me. The FBI supervisor in Boise? Is that a lawful order? You will transfer this to the FBI supervisor in Boise. It is. My response. How did that? Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay, with this? No. But that's your instruction. Yes, sir. So, I transfer and I bring the whole Squad in the conference room. And I said, this is what just happened? This is our instruction, I can't tell you guys what to do. But something bad just happened.
I will have a binder of everything. That's taking place. For that future inquiry. You guys do what you feel like you need to do to prepare yourself for a future inquiry. because again that's a you know, trying to push people to Swear on a warrant. That they know to be false is called suborning perjury. It's a crime. The act of swearing it out, is perjury. so, That's a Friday I do as instructed. Now there's this little flurry of activity.
There's this fresh list of. Oh, you just like to know ABC and director came from They? Asked me to send agents out to go review some of these campsites, whatever the Patriot front supposedly, was at, they do that. And then, the next week is generally questions, coming from Boise about how many devices or some discrepancies there, back and forth, back and forth. I've got the poor Quarter, Lane Police Department guys, going back in, and back in reviewing
stuff. So again, I am doing lawful I am acting upon lawful instructions. But this is a very weird place to be very runoff, is not talking to me anymore. I've told my agents to go back to work on their other cases and I message to my supervisor. I'm taking next week off. And I go back to Montana, what days were the, I mean, what? Still 2022? What months, just people kind of catch up and this is July. So this was Up, we're talking
the week of July 10th. I think I was the case was removed for me on or about July 8th this. So this next week's July 10th, and then I'm going to take the following week off, on, sorry, on leave. So question for you, yes. When you said, I'm gonna take a week off. Mm-hmm. You think that their tentacles went up and they thought you were going to do something like, whistleblower, do something else you think that maybe was a? No, not a kiss.
Know what I know now. So if I was removed from the case on Friday, Monday was a very busy day for my axe because my name was being launched at security division. We need to pull this guy security clearance. I was launched it inside of threat. I was being talked about with home, human resource division of hey, we've got this lgbtq bias supervisor up there that we need to get out of Coalition ASAP. And I'm being referred to Inspection Division. So all the things that you're
not, you don't. I mean a fact is a fact like I don't think it. I don't think I could throw conjecture at you and you'd be like yeah that's that's true. You'd probably say it's not a fact. Sure. I didn't know that it's time, right? They weren't talking to me. I knew that this was a very uncomfortable place to be. I knew that what I'd witnessed was wrong potentially illegal. And I was Going to take leave and go back to my hometown.
So I leave on a Monday. I get a phone call on a Monday from one of my state and local counterparts, and it's like exact I just spent 90 minutes being interviewed by two of your Asics. And it was not good, and I don't know what they're up to, but they're clearly coming for you. He's like, because they were trying to convince me. That you have ruined relationships with law enforcement in North Idaho and I wouldn't work with you anymore. the term set up came out, and it was This.
Captain. telling me everything, I said to try to deter them from this narrative was cast aside and they would try to spin it like okay, you say that but Isn't it true Zach's a disaster up here. and he's like, no, it's not true. So anyway, he relates that to me. Now, the things you're saying are really troubling to me. I'm a stand for my mic for second. Because ruining relationship with local law enforcement was used on mine. Inspection Division was thrown
on mine. Insider threat off the professional responsibility, every single. One of these things security division Every one of these damn things has been said, it's almost like there's a Playbook, it's almost like there's a freaking Playbook and you know, what's even crazier than that? They didn't used to have this Playbook because you're the second of three former ssas from the FBI that's been on this podcast.
And you and one other. So, two of the three have told me that they have seen Sachs suborn perjury senior Executives in the FBI support and perjury and they've paid the consequences for it and not the FBI. Sure. And and they've also turned out and seen that. These these people have eventually lost in federal lawsuits but it took, you know, a decade years it takes forever to make this thing. Right? And so that's why this story, like I get that as long went, I like I'm enthrall here.
I'm learning things that even though the broad Strokes of this, You're saying this and I'm like I don't ten guys this happened to and now you do too because you're in part of this fraternity which is a real different fraternity, then the original FBI fraternity, it's the people that have seen that ugly thing like your body did back in Richmond one time. So bizarre, at this point. I file my first. Official, whistleblower, complaint.
And I say official from somebody, like I filed something to doj oig that said, whistle blower. Tell him what it has a specific. I am reporting. Misconduct. By The Bureau to an entity that is legally defined to receive it. So doj oig is one of them for an FBI employee, right? And I Define that this was at the time. I said this was an abusive power and authority by FBI Salt Lake City division. Us attorney's office District of
Idaho and doj to force you. This warrant, when my age saying, it's not a good warrant and for sure to force them to change their mind. I reach out to. the same retired FBI executive that I talked to about the previous issue, a train Division and I said Hey man. This is happening and he's like, Zach, I'm sorry, they're coming for you. Now he's like if you thought was
born complain, oh yeah. I also made previous quote protected disclosures when I warned my direct chain of command that this was wrong because my are also appropriate. They are also appropriate channels. Now, to be honest I at the time I am still trying to play on Team America and it's like trying to like wave them off from a path of disaster. It's like hey don't go down this path. Like this is not good, this is wrong. Like how am I the only one thinking like this? How, how indeed?
After it's over then it's then it's or a dojo or just getting a report from me that this just happened and it was wrong. so I launched that, I then subsequently have conversations with other local law enforcement that at the same treatment within the Five left on a Monday Monday, Tuesday, that week. These guys are getting visited by my Asics. Do you think they told me they were coming to Quarter Lane Idaho? From Salt, Lake City?
Know you think anybody in my office knew they were in Coeur d'Alene not until one of my agents. Saw them at the US. Attorney's office and said, hey guys, what are you doing here? Nothing. So I then so that's a by Thursday. I have this right by Thursday that week so it's mid July, I get a message from my direct supervisor, the criminal ASAP of Zack and prepare yourself for a phone call with the sac and me, okay. They know I'm only, I take it.
And the sac says Zach, this is your official notice that I've lost confidence in your ability to lead period And I am doing something about it with headquarters and you already filed your whistle which means the Doj. YG the oit told the FBI, I don't know but I told him right then and there oh you did oh yeah. Okay I'll have a difficult conversation. So I said sir He's it's a pretty
tense conversation. Yeah. Um And I said, you know, he's like Zach, you know, you might not know this, but we were up, you know, asaps were up in Coeur d'Alene. It turns out, you've ruined relationships up there. And I'm gonna have to do something about that. And I said, well sir, Who did you talk to? Because I'm getting some kind of, I'm getting contacted by some of those Partners in their describing those conversations a bit differently. Zach. I don't have to tell you who we
talked to, okay? Did you talk to anybody on my squad? Zach, I already told you. I don't need to tell, you know, we didn't talk to your squad and know not everybody says something about you, okay. That mask. All right, unnamed. So he's getting like audibly pissed. I bet. So, because you've done the one thing you're not allowed to do you challenge the challenge challenge, the weakness there, and he informs me that I have committed, the ultimate sin. I have embarrassed him and have
embarrassed the FBI. There it is. And I'm like, all right, sir. Are you about to take administrative action against me back? I'm not going to tell you what about to do. I'm just telling you of lost confidence in you and I'm going to do something. I'm communicating headquarters. I'm like, all right, and he's audibly angry and I asked for another question. He cuts me off says no. I was like, all right, sir listen. I'm not trying to be unprofessional here.
This is clearly uncomfortable. But I'm gonna tell you right now that I don't think what you're doing is being done in. Good faith. and I'm going to tell you right now that I've already filed a whistleblower complaint with doj oig that the actions of you and your executive management team, the US, attorney's office, for Idaho and doj abuse, their power and authority, but trying to force through this warrant Thanks, Zach, that's your right. And then I had like, can I ask
my supervisor a question? And he gets on and he's like, yes, Equity got Where Do We Go From Here, boss? Well Zack, he's still got a squad to run and we've got a branch meeting next week. We'll see you there. Okay, call wins. I do a conference call with my squad and I was like my big thing is transparency. No concept. I have So I have him on the phone. I was like, I just have this conversation. My point to them was, and I made this one clear. I don't know what's going to
happen. But I have a job to do and so do you, I expect you guys to do your job and I expect myself to do mine. Shut up and color. I didn't say the shut up and color, but they got a point that's so, um, call ends with my group. And I had to go the next week. Down to not all the way to Salt Lake. I think we had it in. Pocatello or something like that.
We had a branch meeting. And so, I had to go there to my direct supervisor and like all my other Branch peers and the chief division counsel, and didn't know what I was walking into. Oddly, and what does that feel like walking in there, man? I mean, it was one of the scariest moments of my life and oddly enough. This is a funny sidebar for podcasts. I had just stumbled into the Shawn Ryan podcast interesting, and he had just had on. I think the guy's name was Nick
wavering. Okay, he was a He was on Oda. Lost his leg blown off by like a PKM. And he subsequently became the first above the knee. Amputee to rejoin. An active Oda went on a team, sergeant and a warrant. All right. So anyway, it was that was one of those reflective moments of I'm listening to that on the way down there of like this really sucks. You're driving to this this like firing squad without any. Yeah, and I'm listening to this podcast and I'm like, my life really sucks.
This sucks. I don't know what I'm walking into. Am I getting fired like this? This is no bueno, but I listened to like the story of like a warrior getting his leg blown off and saying like, I'm I don't care, I got a leg going off, like, I'm rejoining a note 8 team and like, all right, Zach perspective, right? Um yes, life sucks. Yes, this sucks. But you're going to survive this. Nobody blew your leg off, like suck it up. So, um, all right. So anyway, I go in, they don't
say boo to me about anything. It's, you know, he's acting like never happened, you know, so what are your thoughts on threat? Idaho, and, you know, what about this Branch priority and this Branch priority? Well, I start to tell some of my peers like what's going on, and fortunately, I had a good reputation with my peers and they're like, Dude, that's crazy. You're telling them that after the meeting? Yeah, like a couple of my, you know, supervisory peers.
So I've got the support of my peers at that point. So anyway, At this juncture, I go back to court Elaine, I'm working. My office is working. Nobody from the front office, is talking to me. I don't know what's going on. Did you think I got it? I didn't know what was going to know. I think I dodged nothing. Okay, there's a freight train to come in. You just don't know where it's at. On the track know. Everything is on known. Okay, this is when I really
thought I've used this analogy. A lot of this fight of I'm playing chess with that board. I can't see in pieces, I don't know. Yeah, that that analogy was really true right in that moment. So I, I realize that there are folks out there in and out the bureau that don't like the FBI agent Association.
I am not one of them and it's very the age of the FBI agent Association has been there for me personally, and, you know, peripherally, every time I've ever asked them I was at the now, here Refuge standoff, I took the Richmond SWAT team to secure the voice income crime scene from HRT. We were once getting interviewed by doj oig when the allegation came out, the HRT shot and didn't admit to it. I had to go and testify. I wanted that was weird to be
interviewed by doj. I didn't We were at the crime scene. I didn't know if we were to be subjects or what you Association had attorneys there for us when my dad had his heart attack and I, you know, Dropped my surveillance and got a plane ticket and flew to Montana from Richmond. Virginia agency Association, sent me a check for that plane ticket when I had this happened to me. I reset the agencies Association and they're like you did the right things like we got your
back and they did. They 100% believe that the Executive Board of the agency Association exercise, what power of influence they had, and they messaged that up to the EAD level and they were told. Yeah, we know. So they the president agency is the time warned me. He's like Zach, I think we've Something's missed. But we've, we've voiced it up and I think they recognize that wrong is wrong. And I think we're okay. So brought to that, August 3rd. Two months.
And one day after I'd received a performance checking that said that my performance was generally glowing, I had exceptional relationships, I received two failure to meet every single performance objective and competency check into my file with, no phone call, I got just getting an email notification, that it's in my file. So that's a Wednesday. I also get a phone call or get a text message on Wednesday. To prepare for a meeting with the sac for the whole squad on Friday.
Okay, so I mentioned the squad, we have a sit down and it's a, hey, these are tough times. We may have all collectively lost some faith in the bureau in this and I don't know what's coming our way with this visit, but this is our Bureau, good bad or indifferent. You will be in a suit. You will look sharp and you will own your decisions and I will own my own. So everybody's looking sharp on Friday morning. Secane show up. I've got everybody. They specifically did not want
tfo's. Only FBI employees. I expect that. We're all going to sit down and we're going to, we're going to hear where we're going to happen. Sic in the ASAP. Come on my office. Shut the door. Sit across from my desk and look at their shoelaces while they tell me Zach, did you see those two performance check-ins on Wednesday? Yes, sir. I did. Well, because of those were removing you as the ASAC, you will go home immediately moving you as a right. I'm sorry.
Yes, we're moving. You is the ssra. You will go home immediately. Take your laptops with you. You're going to work from home until we find you TDY. You will not be allowed back in the ra without parking Nation. You are not allowed to have any official communication with the squad. And you will leave. Now, you have any questions? and I'm like, What's the job I'm going to do? I don't know. Zach, we're still working on that. Okay. Let me shake your hands.
I don't know if you remember that detail. That was a tense moment. Yeah. I do remember. They couldn't look me in the eye. Yeah. I remember that vividly and I bought holes into their top of the head with mine. I think though because they With not looking in the eye, what did it mean to you? I guess is the question. I won't, I won't tell me what I would say is then you then what they were doing was wrong. Is my personal. You know, they're still human beings. What was up?
They knew that they were screwing me over. They knew that they were covering up malfeasance by their own staff and by the doj. And they thought they were going to make me. They're gonna extract me out. They were going to be able to blame me for everything and that you know, they're gonna be a wash their hands of it. Like everything else while Florida is instructed.
They walk out of my office, I pack up my lap tops, throw them in my backpack, leave everything else as is, you know, kid pictures, all that, still sit right there, I walk out, I give a fist bump to my secretary who's got tears running on her eyes and I walk out. Get my car go home and I call agent Association. I said this just happened like WTF but we deterred this. You know, I get negative you know. Like do you want us to kind of try to feel around sleeping throughout what's coming next
like? Yep. Anyway, so then I get Kurt. Suez deck is my attorney. We launched more protected disclosures by Wednesday, the next week, I get an email that I'm to report to West Virginia. So not only am. I walked out of my office, not only, am I cut off from my team? Not only my tool that I'm a giant POS. I'm now cut off from my family, so I've got a wife. I've got two kids under four and I've got terminally ill father at this point.
So, and they want you to go to, they want me to go to see just in West Virginia and work in and talk so that you've talked about that before in your podcast, you know, like our 911 call center. Um, It's like the new version of the Butte r or the Butte division of like where you said Misfit children. Yeah, I mean, so people who don't have the historical perspective on the bureau. You want to share that.
Yeah, so the bureau is always historically had places where like if you get sideways with the bureau they'll send you somewhere so forever. Like you know, director Hoover's favorite was the Butte office of Butte Montana needs to be an FBI Division and it was known for like that was that was The Penalty Box hardware and nobody wants to be there. Yeah. Then turns out that folks got out there and they're like man fishing here and there's some criminals stuff. I wouldn't do a criminal case
out here. Yeah, so now those kind of places are like see just not that there aren't grateful that working, she just criminal justice Information Services Division that's where I like her fingerprint, records and Analysis are but it's also where they've created and talk National threat operations center. So anytime somebody calls like 1-800 you know FBI we got a problem, it goes to end talk. So, anyway, I get that I
received that. I've got an attorney at this point and I For that email to deputy director Paul bait and said. All right, this is happening. I've already reported this to doj oig. This is malfeasance. This was an attempt to suborn perjury on my agents. This happened. Do something about it. Crickets. but, Maybe the next day I get an email revised email back from Salt Lake because I
include them on that email. Every time I launch an email, I include the sac and the Asics they see exactly where I'm throwing them. Yep. And my I'm still going to see just put my unit has changed. Now I'm going to instead of the worst unit, the best unit in Siege which is global initiatives unit. I find out that there's no position there for me to fill but they want me there and again, waffle order I report I'm worn by the agency Association, that a loss of Effectiveness.
Transfer request is coming and it lands on me right after I get to see just some West Virginia loss of affecting us. So that is a mechanism that Salt Lake managers Put into play before, they'd even interviewed my partners in North Idaho that they were going to try to transfer me because I had ruined all these relationships even though they haven't talked about you and where was the transport to?
It's just headquarters at all. So it is a mechanism, good and bad to get somebody a paid transfer out of a problem. So, let's say that maybe you're going through Maybe your poor performer and you know, things are toxic in the area that you're at and they need to get you out of there and they want to do a paid transfer or maybe things outside your control you know you're involved in a shooting.
It's a good shoot. But you know say it's like in Puerto Rico and like things are getting dangerously anymore. Yeah. So they'll do a loss of Effectiveness transfer. So don't have to be bad but in my case it was all bad clearly. It was unbelievable. Indictment of my character. So I get that and That sucked, I will not lie. So I go back and it's a, I don't know, 12 page. EC. Memo of just Factor p. O s. Zack is a liar. Zach can't work with women. Zach can't communicate. He can't lead.
He's talk sick on and on like, you know, everything before you just so, you know, I'm just crushing, you know. So like getting your point you made these comments earlier about when the Betrayal hits the betrayals been hitting but then it it landed with a hard. Yeah, that's the actual knife getting. So that's where, you know, Kurt his credit saved me to some point at that, Junction back in by myself. I'm back in a hotel. Like, I'm sitting at the Marriott, you know.
Oh no, it's all. I want you to be by yourself. Yeah. When you receive this, don't have your support and I work. You have your kids to realize respective, you don't have your friends coffee shop or the restaurant. You'd normally go to Just Breathe It Out. You're now like locked in a place where you don't know anybody. So, Kurt warn me early on that the Playbook was coming and that Nearly everybody else, breaks down under it. They start drinking, they could DUIs they get into a fight.
They make a mistake or the checkout. Yeah. Or they check out really quick. He's like, Zach, they're gonna try to get you to break or they're gonna try and get you to quit. So I call him and I'm telling him about this and he's like, hey man, I know that sucks. But now's not the time to just lay in it. You need to execute and call some people and get people to write letters about what they think about you and like Roger that so 40 letters later.
I'm you know I'm sending these as my response, my response was a two-page letter from me to the assistant director of hrd saying hey this is who I am. Was that person?
Um yeah I'm not gonna remember that of Human Resources Division he had just got the job just and so at that point was also affecting this you're Transformers effectively, already been approved because again you're guilty until proven innocent, you're transfers approved but they give you a You know, you can respond time frame window. So my response was like, I think 37 letters a combination of my local state law enforcement, non law, enforcement Partners,
tribal non-tribal. You name it everybody. I reached out to for the most part was more than happy to
write their own letter. All I told them was they're calling me everything under the sun and saying that you won't work with the FBI anymore because of me, you write what you want and some incredible letters came back, very humbling and then I reached out to some mostly retire, but some former FBI and DEA agents, everything from executive to Saks asaps to line agents to include two agents that work for me and retired in Quarter Lane. Yeah, so hey, this is happening,
I'm going to use your life if you are willing to write a letter of what it was like to work with me, I'm going to send her bottle. So I get all those back in. So, Mike, two, effectively, two-page cover letter. and those letters just and all my previous performance reviews but I've been there. So for three years And you got one like quarterly, what you get them annually but then you get
your checking checks. So, you know, I like, you know, see exhibits, a one, two, and three of my previous performance and look at the one I just got 60 days before this, you know, I get removed. So something very different about me anyway. So, that gets launched. I also then. Communicate the director Wray. I'm taking this to Congress sir, and this is wrong. You should send me back home where my family is. His he responds to me that Zach. Thank you.
I've let Inspection Division, know, and do you Jay oig know Like, how about the send me back? Home part sir. He doesn't respond to that. He followed back up to him. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, and included the essay that email. Yeah. Oh yeah, I'm gonna know what was going on? Absolutely. Yeah. I don't do things in the shadows know. So I get crickets from that. Meantime, I'm trying to figure out what I can do. Useful for. She just there quickly realizing that. I'm not as hero. and, They're
also realizing that. He's getting screwed here. So she just on their own comes up with a plan for me to continue to work for sieges, but do it from my home and Idaho, oh, boy. So she disagrees to send me home? And work for them remotely. And then if part of that. So this guy that's so toxic can't lead. Can't communicate you want? The job is that they give me. So you just Travel the country for us and sell these programs for us. Roger that Where do you want me to go first?
Get all the West Coast divisions. Can you come up with a plan and a budget? Am I get no problem done. Here we go. It's how much is going to cost me to travel? I can travel one to two weeks out of the month. I'll fly out on Like, Mondays. I'll fly home on Fridays. I can hit almost every ra I can get in contact with and I just press execute on that, but it's At that point, it's November. I'm coming up on the end of my initial 90-day TDY.
And the asaps in Salt Lake call me and say, hey, Zack. So we got word back from the 80 of hrd. They didn't approve your transfer, I'm like, great. So I'm going back into the ra. Know, we're going to bring you down at Salt Lake City for another 90 days, and we're going to put you on a pit. For those that don't know what a pip is, that's a performance Improvement plan because again, Zach your horrible I'm like, all right, well after that am I going back in the ra though? They're like no.
What's the job in Salt Lake? I'm going to do. We're still working on that but you're going to report to me the administrative aspect now Okay. Snake. So do we get his name not hurting? No, no, but obviously, he's promoting he's now section chief because That's how the bureau roles. So I then I reached out to some, of my retired. Guys, I'm like, how do I and the Ageless station, how do I get in front of this? Like, this is unbelievable.
I'm used to being able to walk into sacks office with my reputation and just feel like, sir, what do you need for me? This is what I need from you. And I I get the you should call this EAD. So, I text her, I emailed her on a Saturday and I was on the phone with her by Monday. And with the 80 of hrd. So this was the EAD over Human Resources. Branch. Who is Not viewed favorably with some of the security division things that she has done. And some of the testimony that
she has given look drunk. He's my favorite. I don't know what you're talking about her here. So anyway, I have a conversation with her and it's it's it's three human beings on the phone. So much for not like dropping names. I have to drop this name. She needs to be so he's gonna be explored she communicates with me and she's like, Zach for everything you've been through. You look like you're pretty well put together.
I'm like, Well, ma'am, I don't trust anybody at this point and I'm also well aware that like if you appear to be a basket case, that's a reason for spending your security clearance, correct? I'm like, oh man. Make no mistake. This is sucked a lot. But I'm fine. It's like, okay I like but this is wrong. All of it. Up and down from the very beginning. So we talked for an hour and a half or so. Agents Association takes this directly to the deputy director.
And the PIP is denied. Oh wow, Zach, can you maybe do just another 90 days with this work from homeless. He just while we kind of clean this up. Sure. Now, you're a subject of an internal investigation. Yeah, they told you that know, I get I get told that by Salt Lake division, the 80 of hrd is say and he's like, we're going to clean this up. Can you do know the 90 days? We're real. Sorry about this. So we'll disconnect their love
people. A lot of people really trying to look out for you and and get roadblock. Machines, doing with the machine does? Yeah. I brought embarrassment to the bureau. I've never reported it to Congress. I will not as I was advised by A good man. The ages Association. President. Trump's good guy. He advised music, like, Zach. I know what you did was right. I know what they did was wrong with the bureau is a really big
machine to fight. You may want to consider not fighting this fight in begging for mercy and trying to get a soft Landing for yourself. So somewhere I'm like, I hear you, man. But I just, I mean, not that person. You don't have it in you for better for worse, I'm not that person. So, um, anyway, that TDY was, he just kept getting extended 90
days, 60 days, 90 days 60 days. Never knew when it was going to end Inspection Division. You know, interviewed me last took forever to finally get that done. Then it got moved to Oprah and then it was like, well, is it done? Is it done like what, what's happening here? You know, I've got my I've got Kurt as an attorney, I've got attorneys from the age Association which were phenomenal guys.
Again, I'm a big proponent of being Association because they've always been there for me and then February of 2024, I am on my way back from a trip to La where I visited the LA office in their own race. And like she just called me and like, man, we're getting these rave reviews. Like you know, thank you for everything you do like use of
these programs. Just go away through the roof and I get a voicemail when I hit my connect from the new sac and Salt Lake Division, and its sack Can you call me? And I do and she's like exactly Europe. Paperwork is Landon, can you meet me in the Quarter Lane already tomorrow morning? I was like, yes, ma'am. So I land in Coeur Lane, you know, I'm preparing for this 10:00 meeting. I reach out to all my attorneys, Kurt included, and it's like, man.
It's the apology tour like if they were going to do something else like they're gonna fire you they'd call you in Salt Lake City like they're coming up to you. They're gonna put you back into the ssra. They're going to discuss you off and say we're real. Sorry about that. And I'm like, I don't know fellas, but we'll see what happens. And I walk in and it's her, then the female Sac for Salt Lake division, the brand new creme ASAP web never met.
And the security guy. Good man former retired army officer, CSO CSO Chief security officer. Yep, they sent me down at the table. And you know, it's like bad news. You never know how to deliver it and she's like Zach. I'm sorry, it's dismissal. Like okay. He's just staring at me, it's like, all right, well, I've got this packet for you to read when you're ready. And then we've got to start processing this. And my poor Chief security officer starts.
Reading me out of the security clearance and he's shaking. And he's like be clear, your security clearance isn't being revoked, you're just being read out and he's shaking, he's like missing where he needs me to sign and I put my hand on his shoulder. And I'm like, brother, you're not the one getting walked out today. Take a deep breath, right? And it was enough to break, you know, kind of break some attention in the room. We got through that ASX, obviously very nervous because
I'm gonna loaded gun. You know, and he's like, hey, can you, you know what kind of holster you wearing? And I'm like, inside the waistband, is it one of those that you could kind of, like, take off hand to me, I'm like, yeah, could you take it off and leave the gun in the holster? No problem. Here's the gun. That's the same way to give a gun to an a sec. You don't want to give them a loaded weapon, I haven't touched it. So I hand everything over and
it's like, all right. Well, you know, I don't have all my I have my view car in the parking lot. But I've seen I have stuff at home laptops and stuff at home. They're like, yep, we've figured that we're gonna need to just follow you back to your house like, okay. so that Agent. That was my Nemesis in the area, was the only other person that
was there. And I was like, I don't want him coming to my house because I know what he is and they sex like well, He's the only other agent I got because we kicked everybody else home. I need him to be there to have two agents there. I'm thinking about it and I'm like, I'm real pissed. I'm like, I don't want this. EOS on my property but I also don't want to prolong this thing and he comes back. He's like how about he just stays in the car? I'm like sold.
So they already. So my office that this whole point for a year and a half had been like in mothballs, like all my pictures are still in the wall, kids picture on the desk, all that stuff, they'd boxed it all up, they were ready, they put it in my truck in the The Bureau car and they finally back to my house and they've got the list of all my FBI property and it's like up. Here's my M4 is my laptop way. Here's my body armor. Boom, boom.
I want to keep the M4, right? Just so handle that over. Quick efficient. The ASAP is like, I want to say thank you for how you've handled this. I'm like, yeah, I understand I don't think the picture understand, like, I get it. I understand, he leaves. I never met him before the chief security officers just like soccer, you, okay? And I was like, thanks John. Him a hug. He walked out a new how uncomfortable he was. Yep. So I can only imagine how helpless he thought because I
knew what was happening. He know what was wrong, they know what's wrong but he had to feel powerless. What can you do? He's doing the lawful orders, he's being what he's got to do and like it's not illegal immoral so you know they left and then I made my phone calls, you know, and it was like all the attorneys were like What just happened? Like, um, I'm proposed for dismissal but because I was a veteran, I know not all veterans
have gotten this treatment. Some Guardians Were Somehow looking out for me, they put me on. Paid administrative leave. While I appealed, Um so I was on paid administrative leave from February till August. Unfortunately, my dad died 16 days after that notice of dismissal. But they got to redact the opr file reviewed it. And I probably submitted back the world's largest appeal because I had been conducting eeo and whistleblower investigations against the
government. And I had depositions done, I had a pile of stuff I had evidence of Perjury, all that stuff. So that goes back. I ultimately go back before, opr. And they don't even allow me to finish my opening statement for. They start cutting me off and just hammering me and ultimately they boil it down to this. Jack your failure in judgment to not instruct your agency to do a more aggressive investigation of
the Patriot front. Was wrong and wrong to the degree because this was at the deputies level deputy director and Deputy attorney general, that. That poor judgment is risen to severe. Misconduct. So again, how subjective can you make this? And then my August, I got a FedEx letter that said that the ad of opr was upholding the Dismissal and I was henceforth dismissed. So as you know, lose your health insurance lose your pay.
I mean I could have lost my pay in February but I kept it, you know, somebody's decision probably at hrd. Because again I think some people that could see wrong. So wrong and did what they thought they could do without causing a bunch of waves to protect me. And then I started, you know, I survived that I followed my other motions for appeal continued, my other fights of going through, the government's kangaroo courts of EEOC and
oerm. And I had been in communication with the house select committee on what position of government. They're the ones that connected me with random Devine. They're still talking about potential testimony with me. The Senate Judiciary Committee is talking about testimony with me and yeah. So like that's death and me trying to figure out like, what my next chapter in life was going to be I took over the Family Farms business.
I have two questions. only well, just these are two really direct questions and they'll probably If you had to do it all over again, would you do the same thing? I think I thought about that. I know, yeah, I wouldn't push harder in the beginning to stick my foot down that The city's gonna execute its own search warrant. Because as we could have had that executed, we could have had those phones starting to get dumped that first week.
After I said, maybe the second week after the event and it would have been quickly coming to light that. There is no evidence on these phones of conspiracy to write or
conduct other acts of violence. If I could have been persuasive enough to get through that even say like hey you guys go ahead and start drafting this Federal warrant but we're going to ask you the city one and if we come across the evidence of federal crime then we'll have some good fruits to put in to that warrant and we'll execute the federal warrant on top of it. You do that all the time. I don't know that I had been successful because again, reading a room wasn't about what
the evidence you might find. It was about that flag, they're going to plant. That's what I would have done different beyond that. I followed every lawful order, I was giving a reported misconduct. I supported my agents. I wish I could have done more to protect them because they also got op art and I also know that they spent this entire time up getting I'm being trashed out in the array because again, right, my reputation has to be soiled
very hard. Everywhere to justify what's happened because it's it's saxophone. I say that because like I've written the read these statements from folks in the area and they all have the same darragh statements. Well I've heard since that removed that Improvement he couldn't get along with everybody and see that but I've heard that and you know, I heard he was like late on a 3002 once it's like I signed a report
late. Um, again stuff that they wouldn't be in a position to know, unless somebody told them and everyone had it in their interviews. So I thought that was painfully comical. But there's been. I've been extremely fortunate that I didn't crumble under the pressure. I didn't break any rules. I forced them to go all the way to the end of trying to make this very subjective decision that they probably know would get overturned. If I ultimately took a to a lawsuit.
And I have maintained the support of my peers which is what I really care about. So in the middle of all this, I'm working for West Virginia. It is election time for Agents Association. Division reps. So, like division already has a rep. She wants to run again. Well, somebody puts my name forth even though I am the one not to be spoken of in Salt Lake division. And I get elected as the new Agents Association rep, for Salt Lake division in the middle of all this. And you know what?
Every ASAP and SCC is also a voting member of the ages Association so I'm sure they didn't vote for me. I'm sure. But let me ask you, there were plenty of others that did and I went to work representing the division and I had times where the CDC had to call me as the ages Association rep and say, hey Zach. I got a call you because you're the rep and we just had a shooting and those guys are members. They got Roger that give me their names. Contact them. Hey thanks for calling me.
Have a good day. Dick. So I want to. It was my first question and I want to say this, you know, I don't think the story is over. Oh no. We have a new president now so now I'm I mean I'm still fighting. I mean I'm keeping all my irons in the fire until the winds change but my next question. Is this yeah will you go back? Would you go back? Difficult. I would ask for an hour at this moment because I really need to use the restroom when we've been chatting for hours.
So, okay, you've two. Fine. Gentlemen Can Talk Amongst yourselves for a minute and I will come back and answer that question because I do think it's important. I do feel yeah. What'd you think? You didn't know all that. Yeah, he's incredible. That's what you thought. SBI FBI agents were supposed to be right. It pisses you off. it's so like, the crazy thing is too for me because He's explaining those meetings.
I was in that meeting. I had that meeting, you know, I watched the handshake because they knew that they were doing the wrong thing. I All that and all of it's like, reliving all of it again, so it's really intense. Gary's been going through that right now too. So I know Gary was in our chatter early or, you know, but it's like I shook those hands, you know what they were cold.
They were cold because they were in fight or flight because they were they were petrified of a person that stood and said I'm not scared of doing the right thing even though the consequences are going to suck. And he said it right there he's like, yeah, this is really sucking the people that are involved in it, they were Party City evil. He did the wrong thing. There's a lot of them. you know,
we it's hard to to know you. And what you went through. and, And and and not be emotional for you, and then to hear Zach and hear Steve. And then to meet your family like me your wife, meet your kids. And, and not just be. Angry for you like to to feel. You know. If you trace it back and this is nothing to do with me, but you trace it back to decisions that
I made. I didn't make those decisions that I wanted to. I made him because I had to and you just Choice. It's not it's not a decision it's like could I have done things a little bit more aggressively early or none of those were could I have done a different path? Could I walked away from this? Could I have asked for this cup? Not to be handed. Nobody. Nobody feels that way. When they've done it. So it, I'm sorry.
I mean it I want the FBI to be exactly who's Zach is, I want the FBI, did exactly who you are. I want to have got. And we thought this before I was like Garrett, he's He's on a rip, he's angry. You're like yeah, we're all angry and I but, you know, there's this place that you go to and you've been there. Like, I've been like Kyle. Can you like just bring it down just a little bit like no. And I'm like, I'll buy a teddy bear by. Yeah, I can't even, I have a
teddy bear, I've got four kids. I hug them. That's what keeps me going on that. That's what, that's, what keeps my sanity, but I'm pissed for
your story. I'm pissed for what you went through, because I saw it, I've seen it happen to people that I think are better people than me. And and I know exactly how unjust it is and the worst is reading it that somebody else that has looked you in the eye before but didn't have the balls to say it's your face will pan out something that is blatantly
false. They know it's false and they're doing it because it's just gets them because you're the problem because you stood up and said, hey I just don't think we're doing the right thing here. Like didn't it wasn't supposed to mean something, you know, wasn't there supposed to be a principal? Wasn't it about doing the right thing? Didn't we hear Chris Reagan? Get up in front of every person in the FBI over and over and
over again. And say, we do the right thing for the right reason, in the right way. And I said, no, you didn't. And then they're like, like well, You can't say that these are just platitudes you're supposed to listen to so for all that Zach I got this one for you. We wear it Eagle down, maybe we'll turn it right side up at some point.
I got a second one for you, too. For when you want to leave it on something for permanent, but these are black pins, we have the white ones people buy them on the website. That's what Garrett and I created, but the black ones are the ones are the people that have actually, like, they've walked it. And some people have and they know what it is. And you know, you don't even have to wear publicly just keeping your pocket. It's like a coin in some ways but I appreciate it.
The people who know what it looks like. It's like, You've seen it. You had a choice to turn around. So what even told you as a mentor? Which I didn't know that but it makes perfect sense. They walk away from this. Find a safe landing. You're like No, I'm gonna put my foot to the gas. because, You know, you should have for one of my Quantico classmates which is important. You just did the thing that the leaders are supposed to do in an organization that is full of
managers. And defends them, like it is, the reason I keep thinking this, and maybe I'm reading too much into it. But I think that the reason that guy like you cannot go further is because you expose that operational morality of going along to get along. And if you go up there and you go head to head with them, then they have to face it themselves. Like, how many of these things have? I done?
Where I knew I was doing the wrong thing, I looked the other way, because that's the culture that's what's been encouraged. And if you're a person that's going to go against the grain eventually, You're going to, you're going to push them to a decision for their chips and they've got to get rid of you because you're the problem. As you said, you will go up Against the Machine that has a certain ethos. And the ethos is don't embarrass us. Shut your mouth do something that's wrong.
Do something illegal or moral. Perjure yourself suborn perjury, whatever it may be because God forbid, we have to actually do the thing that we all swear the oath to do. If you do that. It should actually be really easy. It's just like hey we disagree with you on this one. We think somebody should sign search warrant. No problem. Thanks for having principles. You have a great place in this organization. That's not the organization that
it is today. I also think I inadvertently forced to be wrote a fire me. because, I never lost the support of my peers in spite of the machine doing what the machine does of protecting itself and trying to control the narrative. I am still the one that is not spoken of in Salt Lake division, consistency and character. They machine, I believe this is, this is not fact, but this is fact-based personal opinion. I believe that I needed to be fired as a symbol everybody else.
So, what happens if you stand up to them machine, 100%. Um, I could not because I was very public in the right way of You know, Agents Association was pushing me. I was not quiet when I went around the bureau. I was well known and you had lots of people that were bringing this to leadership at different points. Yep. I was elected was comical. I was elected as their agency, that final hilarious.
Yeah. Which again, you know, if there's things that are humbling throughout all this those letters and people riding about you of Their Own, Desire to help. Humbling. Some of the things that they said, you know, being voted upon first because I mean satellite Rah. Let me just in Salt Lake division because we're so scared. Don't even know me now, but reputation went out for other areas and I've heard it from
those two and that's the key. It's like people recognize that there was something unjust happening. Yeah. And, you know, Bureau couldn't cover all, they got two big for them to deal well. So you stood up for your guys, too. I mean, you literally supported him to the end. There was sure. And I mean, I've been thanked by, you know, Congressional staffers and a congressman and
stuff about that. And I struggle with that because it's just like Yeah, that's what you're supposed to do just with the job. That's exactly what the job is like you, you know, you support your people and I think that's where culture wise, the bureau really fails. The culture is you don't embarrass the bureau, is this the bureaus, a thing, The bureau is not a thing. The bureau is a collection of people. The work that the bureau does is done by the GS 10 to 13.
Most of them are special agents. At the bottom of the totem pole. Those are the best jobs in the bureau. That's where the work gets done. That is the FBI and I believe that the FBI can be in, is to some degree exceptional. Because I think many of those people are exceptional, but I also believe that they would be doing exceptional work. If they were DEA agents ATF agents or Bankers.
Correct. There are exceptional human beings, and in the right position, they can do exceptional things in this concept of what you don't embarrass the bureau. As if it's the bureau, as like an organization of bureaucracy, this is the thing is just very misplaced its in dangerous. It's when the mission.
It leaves the institution, the institution exists for the sake of the mission, but if the if the mission is just serving the institution and it has, this is what Rob Green calls institution over Constitution. Yes. And once that happens once you are serving an entity, that itself licking, its an ice cream cone. It's it's this, it's all the worst things of Washington. Except now it's a nationwide thing with a badge and a gun. Sure. It can be fixed.
I actually I've moderated on my burn it all down thing because have you, I really look at the end of the day. It's going to exist. That's I'm pragmatic in the way.
I always knew that they were never going to do this or like nobody has the balls to do that sort of thing and there has to be some entity that would do it. I have other ideas on how you could do it because you mentioned it earlier, some of the best long forcement officers, you found were probably Task Force officers that were federally deputized and had Title, 18 and 21 authorities because they've had the experience of doing car stops.
And they've worked probable, cause, and they know what's right and wrong. And they've worked it on the street. And if you gave them, you know, exaggerated authorities and allowed them to go to an ausa. They would still do awesome work. Should you have Specialists and subject matter experts probably? Yeah. Should you have people that have
a lot of time doing this? That have long complex investigation that nobody has the stomach to do white collar, like, who's gonna do white collar crimes other than the FBI? But at the end of the day, it's not going anywhere. So it needs to be dramatically removed from whatever this toxic. Like metastasized thing is and I agree with you.
It's a full generation away which means it's everyone wants it to be like fixed, like you're gonna get in there Shuffle, like a deck of cards and you're gonna get them all lined up and it's not, it's not gonna happen. You've got to fix the institutional, cultural problem you do. I am hopeful for a Louis freeh effect where, you know, headquarters really gets flushed out and that it the bureau becomes less headquarters driven again.
I think I, you know, the Foster been integrated program management is is just awful on its effect on the bureau and I think the last I don't know, four or five six years is just this culture of fear has become ingrained in the bureau my personal opinion fact-based, observation, based on all the conversations have but I think it's real and again, but it's my opinion, I'm going to sell it's just that I can only represent
myself. I believe that there is a large number of FBI, special agents, and support staff, who are fearful of their own organization.
I always looked down upon to some degree special agents that found non investigative positions cart Tek agents, you know, the the confidential human file room coordinators recruiters because it was a distraction from our core Mission core Mission, the FBI is to investigate federal crimes All those other stuff is peripheral to that, but now I have conversations with my friends that are still in. Those are the safest jobs that yeah, you have to get away.
Because again, my personal opinion is, there is a large number of FBI agents that are trying to just hide from the bureau. And I think they're all very nervous. Many of them are nervous, but cash potel. Because in law enforcement, the only thing you hate worse than the status quo has changed, so there's no changes coming. They're scared for that change. Like what? That gonna mean for them individually? I don't think anybody scared for the bureau. I think folks are scared for.
What's the ramification for their job? Going to be natural to their paychecks, their way of life and in the bureau I now say unfortunately we allow that or culture Promotes that it's such a large Port of your portion of your identity. So like it's back to like some of the most soul-crushing things of what the bureau did to me was take that identity and turn it on me and Rob it from me, that's
really hard. When you've been living in a culture where you're an FBI agent, son, like that's who you are. Like you represent that every waking hour of the day. Matter of fact, you represent that when you're sleeping because you're, you're Glock better be nearby if you need to go into actually expected to do it. So I just say that of I think there's I have a lot. This gets to me answering your question of like what I come back to the bureau.
I believe that there are a lot of very good Americans that work in the FBI. I think the majority of them are, I think the majority of them wanted to do really good work and I think many of them are scared of the bureau that they're in today and I think that they will be overjoyed. If a cash potel can come in and could start to Remove some policy and start to remove some headquarters mandated XYZ that they're driving everything and just allow.
Specially to be special agents investigate crimes. Put cases together and promote them for prosecution with the insurance office and hopefully Pam Bondi. It's enough pressure on the US attorneys, that they prosecute cases. Um, so getting back to, I'm going to answer your question. It's it's nuanced and it's complicated just because of my life and what is important to me? So this happened, I can't change that. I can't change what happened
over the last couple years. I can't, you know, change the fact of my dad passed away. I've got this family business that I got to figure out either. I can make it work or I can't but there's a lot of things that are not ideal. It's in my hometown. That's six seven-hour drive from me in Quarter Lane. I made a promise to my wife. I moved to Quarter Lane that, I wouldn't move her again if she didn't want because she's a professional, she's a journey. She can get her career established.
We moved her parents from Georgia, with the promise of will have an integrated family, and my kids have the benefit of seeing their grandparents on almost a daily basis. And I think many kids would benefit from that, and I want my kids benefit from that. It's huge for me. They won't really appreciate it until they're adults know, but that's an investment in them. I'm not willing to walk away
from that. I'm not willing to walk away from my family's Legacy from C sharp Farms business standpoint. What I'm also not willing to walk away from all the friends I still have in the bureau. I don't want to be fired. I don't like the fact that I took 180000 year pay cut. I don't like the fact that I now have.
Well I'm thankful that I have VA health insurance that I have it but you know I don't like the fact that I was taking my health insurance and I certainly don't like selfishly that I've lost the ability to retire at 50 with a comfortable pension and I can, you know, make quality of life decisions from there, I don't like it. What? I'm only willing to go so far just to satisfy my own financial
needs. I would be willing to go farther if it was I felt and believed that I could do something that was really beneficial to my friends that I think. Are the FBI. Because again my view, the FBI is the individuals to do the work. What that looks like? I don't know whether or not. I would be willing to. I will string myself out pretty hard and try to meet a lot of needs. My family work etc. My employees. But I'm also cognizant this is been an interesting Journey For
Me of been very stressful. That young kids try to isolate them from that try to be very present. There's times that have cried and it's Trying to be present for them and it's also the same time, like, I'm willing to sacrifice myself and my own sleep, I realize that I have I have limits to what I can accomplish. That's right. So, whatever it is.
That comes my hope. Honestly, at this point, is for a conversation with people that are in a position to like make real decisions so that if if they're asking something of me it can be well this is what I think I would be able to do and what I would need from you to be able to make it work for my
family. But I also recognize that there are 38,000 employees in the FBI and I'm just one of the former ones and I might not Merit that and I got to be okay with that because it might not come and I will just make decisions that are the best for my family and within the balance of what I'm reasonably willing to do the power of a dollar and of that quote unquote, secure paycheck, It's been put into perspective and balance throughout all this of what it doesn't mean.
But I also see that coming from the comfort of I've got a professional wife isn't a stay at home, mom. And I was able to We'd saved up a bunch of money because we need things for coming. So like between savings and her income, like we're living. We're surviving without having to like sell our home and move. And I realize that some guys aren't been in that position. So I'm very fortunate. So it's a very long-winded response to your question of
what I go back. The answer is I would but it would really have to be the right set of circumstances. Is even if it's cash potel at the top of that chain and he is true to his work. Because I don't know cache itself from from Adam. You're going back onto the boot. So I'm agree. Yeah, you know and you know, you know what, you don't know what you don't know, and you're gonna have to play by the rules again. you know, so and if you got back in and the rules were the same Right.
Just with the different skin on the outside. so, um, short answer is, I would but And there's a whole bunch of that, you know? But um, So, in the meantime, you know, I'm fighting my fights and I'm being a bit more vocal about what happened. I hope at the end of this, if I do come back in the bureau or not, I hope I don't become the example that the bureau wanted me to be of what happens to a guy that stands up for what was right, and what the bureau can
do to him. I hope I'm an example of what the new Bureau can be, and then if you really will understand your ground and do it right, that you'll survival this and and losing good job, shouldn't be the end of your yourself Worth or your dignity. And no don't become the person that they wrote in those stupid little flying files. That's the big key. So, you know, and the family business has been, let's talk about why you're at shots.
That's the family business. So my father 50 years ago so 50 year anniversary. So 1975 started a company called C Sharps arm C period Sharps Arms Company We build. New Sharps rifles from late 1800 so they're all single shot, Hammer guns, metallic cartridge with modern Metal Gear. We we build those out of 8620, Billet, in-house, small team. Their Benchmade rifle, they're not cheap.
But my margins are effectively zero because you know, labor cost of gone up. And I'm trying to I'm trying to make my guys living wage and Cheryl cost of gone up. I have a lot like an arrow that out for the whole world but like they're a lot of challenges, like it's not just slide into that and like things are Breezy family business, like rock along but it's never run. A small business knows that that's a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
So not to mention the fact that like I travel over there a week or two a month. But so C Sharps Arms, I used to come to shot in an array. As a child, I mentioned this to you. The last shot show. I went to was, I think 1993, I was I was 13 years old. I had been it was like my fourth year doing the show circuit. If I started at nine in the sixth grade, I'd have to sneak into shot because you still had to be 16.
And yeah, it's the last time we did shot even then was getting really expensive that you just wasn't necessarily worth the squeeze for our small business. I still did the interraciales throughout high school and then my dad had stroke when I was in college. And I did the last minute fill in there. I think it's for the Reno show actually. So, I'm at shot. Like I just came here as a non exhibiting manufacturer.
To try to, you know, make relationships, the American shooting Journal, just did me a very good solid. I was on there. I was in. And unfortunately, on their December cover for their December issue about as tall as the bar in your standing in front. I had an indicator Barn. um, So, you know, I'm making friends. I'm getting back into a community that I've been away from for almost 30 years because I mean, I really left it at 18 and went on.
Unfortunately, you know, with my with C Sharps Arms, like my dad had a partnership that fell apart, he lost it. All I just refused to give up and he built it back from effectively, nothing lost the building to the bank, the building were still and eventually bought it back built a, you know. He originally just had a custom shop. He partnered with a manufacturer and we were distributed for that manufacturer.
When that partnership failed, that was effective with nothing to sell and he built his small, Custom Shop into the manufacturing shop that it is today for again, Sharps rifles. And we also make the Winchester John Browning designed 1885 Lowell. So I've got, I saw my phone, I was getting messages as a guy. A customer of ours is trying to set a world record, longest distance shot with an iron sight with a gun that I built for him in 30. 30 of all calibers, he's
got to shoot Beyond 2,260 yards. He is so tickled pink with how accurate this gun is. He wants to get his close to 3,000 yards as he can keep the bullet stable. He talked about last weekend, he went to, he's a long range shooter that, you know, he went to one of his local matches and they're all, you know, high power suppress, you know XYZ, they're all laughing and giggling, as he's pulling this, you know, Woodstock case, hardened steel receiver.
No suppressor, no scope gun out of his gun case and it's a unknown distance steel Target shoot 500 to 1200 yards. He's got his loaded up for it. He's got it all tuned in with his computer. He lays the target. He would dial up his sight with the computer. Said it was supposed to be First shot at every time and that's what fire inside. So 30 30.
Yeah, I mean Grant, he's pushing almost 308, ballistics out of that 33 but so I have to, you know, through all that, you know, 67 hours away from it. And I'm not willing to just pick up my family and, and move on. I've got to take that into consideration with whatever my next chapter is, or isn't with the bureau. I'm here for shot again, just build those relationships. Try to build up a customer base again for the company, his margins need to increase from me
in sales. Need to increase for me, in order to have a successful business, just like anybody else in business. So like those are my goals as specific. Manufacturing Evolution things that I'm trying to accomplish. Some of them have been pretty difficult like I am trying, dad was a paper-based system so like I'm trying to do everything from you know e-commerce integrate automation for inventory and you know, I'm talking to seller and I'm like well what can you guys do?
You know the XYZ? So for those who are interested so it's C Sharps Arms calm. So C is for Christians for the original Sharps patent, holder was Christian Sharps, originally our percussion guns and then after the Civil War they were converted into subsequently redesigned as a metallic cartridge gun. And yeah, so it's a, it's a niche markets but they can hunt, they can shoot there's black better cars. You can shoot Smokeless in our guns discussion 30s. So she's shooting smokeless and
jacketed bullet. Yeah. So he's freaking awesome. That's life. I mean that's like amazing. And the fact that I'll put them in the DCF guns, right? So that's three stores on how excited that makeshift but I'll very much did a Colorado, so great. No, I mean a lot of stuff for him. My philosophy on business is I don't believe business needs to be a 07 game. I don't believe that in order for me to win, you have to lose I realized that that thought process is not Universal in the
business. I've got some very full of Arizona, oceanfront property and you know, sharp tooth competitors in my space. Like my refusal to name drop, I don't talk shit. I promote my products, I build relationships and friendships that are mutually beneficial, and I'm always looking for that. Because again, I think, if you succeed, I want to succeed. If, I succeed, if I succeed, you should succeed, my customers succeed, my Craftsman, should, succeed. My vendor should succeed, and my
supplier should succeed. It should be all the way around. Not, I have to crush somebody else to be able to be successful in the space. Have you talked to Night Hawk? Justin, you know, Night Hawk, I'm from there, but no, I haven't. So while we're here, we're going to go meet with them because they have a pretty good distribution chain, too. To put you into those places, right? So guns are my passion. I love it. Fun, too. I wish we could not talk politics and just do guns.
I would do that all day long. That's why I'm not here too. It's the thing and I agree like that Rising tide. That's all the ships. That's the attitude that that used to be an American attitude. I think a lot of people didn't have to do Cutthroat. So anyway, I think it's, I think it's a refreshing. I just want to get people at
least a little taste. Another little facet of of your of your story, which is taking a family business, and bringing it back from from the brink, which is as American as anything else, you know. And I appreciate you spending a ton of time with us. I have no idea how long we've been going there but it's been a while. I feel like our legs are gonna need some walking, which is cool. We're gonna go walk around the
SHOT show. We'll do this again tomorrow morning with a little bit more timeliness and we will not be delayed at. We've got our setup now. So thank all the audience, that's that, we've gained audience as the as the podcast has gone on for whatever that's worth. So for all of you who've been listening, thank you so much for listening. We do appreciate that. I'll give Joe, and then we'll give Zach final word if you like.
Um, yes. So we'll, we'll post the entire thing on the audio version for conservative daily, so you can go to apple. Vodka Google podcast Spotify Pandora, iHeartRadio TuneIn and more. You'll see the BK Network. You'll see this over six day period of time. So I think we spent like five hours here, probably. So um, so so just you'll see this in Parts. But incredible story, I do want to say this. Is Zach.
I've said, thank you now twice. and, I I don't know why your story and Kyle story and Steve's story resonates with me. Probably because it's the antithesis of what I think of, when I think of the FBI, I didn't have a strong opinion of the FBI and, you know, you restore that kind of idea that this is a small part of what the FBI is not a big part.
And so if we can get that, the small part that is actually hurting the ability to have the FBI, have a good reputation or restoring kind of dignity to the organization. I'm rooting for you to go back and hopefully that it fits into just skull crushing. Yeah. Maybe some of that. But the idea is right, you know, I'm always driven by my face and frankly said some awful things about me and you go to Dark Places. So I just anything I can do to help you. Not go to those Dark Places. I'm here.
I'll stay in shoulder shoulder. I thought. I want to thank both of you for doing what you do. I am a firm believer that this new media is, where at least American Media needs to be having real conversations with real people about some real shit. So I've never met you before, but thank you for what you said, and thank you for being here with me and letting me share my story and I mean thanks to you. You are a bit of a barn burner and I know you have a mixed reputation of your own.
You've got your friends and you've got the folks who really don't like you. I don't agree with everything you say, but I think what I've learned from you is, you have, Tried to support me in your own way and never asked anything in return which says something about you for me. And I have also learned that, you know, I can tell you, I don't agree with that. And just walk away, okay?
That you say it or not like that, you're outside the bureau, you say what you want to say from your experience? I will say and you can now empowered me to say what I want to say about the bureau and my own experience because you've got yours and I've got mine and every other employee that's ever been there. It's got their own experience. So, I think you for that, um, Know, and I again everybody that ends up listening to this that knows me and supported me, you
know, just thanks, you know. I mean that peer support, it's been crushing, you know, it's a soul punch but I've had some incredible people that have supported me and I've said before that, you know, I'm very lucky in the fact that I somehow managed to surround myself with some people during the best of times that we're still there when that shit hit the fan that's and it was not the best of times anymore.
And many of them I thought for because they thought really powerless because they're like what like what can we do here? Like we would love to do it. So thanks for everybody that's known me this done that and thanks everybody still in the bureau that would fall into my hero category.
I don't have that much love for the zeros that are out there and some of the folks that did what they did to me, but I really believe in the folks that are in the FBI doing what they do, regardless of, whether it's a treaty or case, agents or everything in between, we you guys do a good service for the bureau and I am very hopeful that this change in Direction and wind. It makes you more capable of doing those things that the American people deserve. Amen. That's the last word, folks.
God bless you, thanks for listening. Hope you have a great day. We'll see you again tomorrow. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Kyle seraphin show streamed live weekdays on rubble.com slash Kyle seraphin. Follow Kyle on Twitter truth social and Instagram at Kyle seraphin.