Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, September 16, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
With confidence in the objectivity of FBI investigations on the wane, the bureau’s special agent in charge of the Miami field office, Jeffrey Veltri, appeared at press conferences on Sept. 15 and 16, 2024 and read prepared statements following yesterday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state would conduct its own investigation.
As for Veltri, before he could be promoted to head up the FBI’s Miami field office, he was ordered by top FBI officials to scrub his Facebook page of anti-Trump posts, a whistleblower told the House Judiciary Committee last year.
Meanwhile, Melania Trump on Saturday slammed the FBI’s raid of Mar-A-Lago in 2022 and noted that the search should serve as a “warning to all Americans.”
Trump recalled the raid in a post on X promoting her new memoir, “Melania.” The video included an image of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures performed by the government.
“I never imagined my privacy would be invaded by the government here in America,” she said. “The FBI raided my home in Florida and searched through my personal belongings. This is not just my story, it serves as a warning to all Americans, a reminder that our freedom and rights must be respected.”
The whistleblower called Veltri “adamantly and vocally anti-Trump” and said FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate and Executive Assistant Director Jennifer Moore were involved in directing Veltri to cleanse his social media of the anti-Trump vitriol, Kerry Pickett reported for The Washington Times in November of last year.
“The home of President Donald Trump is located in the area of responsibility of the Miami Field Office. It was well known that Veltri was adamantly and vocally Anti-Trump,” said the whistleblower’s disclosure, which The Washington Times obtained.
“Wray, Abbate and Moore wanted to ensure that Veltri appeared non-political, Veltri was ordered to remove all of his Facebook and social media posts that were anti-Trump.”
Veltri also oversaw efforts to suspend agents’ security clearances if they seemed to be a “right-wing radical,” the whistleblower said.
The allegations against Veltri were serious and deserve further investigation, Chris Swecker, a lawyer and law enforcement professional who served as assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division during the George W. Bush administration, said at the time.
“Let’s say half of that is true. If they wiped his social media clean, that’s something that needs to be looked at by the DOJ and the [Office of] Inspectors General,” Swecker told The Times. “It’s highly improper to wipe things clean that shows some kind of bias. I know they want it off, but then there could have been an inquiry about it, and it could have held up the promotion.”
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Veltri and security division assistant section chief Dena Perkins were accused in another whistleblower disclosure of trying to sideline agents — including military veterans — by stripping them of security clearances, The Times reported previously.
In 2016, Veltri was promoted to chief of the civil rights unit in the criminal investigative division at FBI headquarters where he oversaw the management of all hate crime, color-of-law, human trafficking, and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act investigations in the country.
The bureau faced criticism over its handling of the investigation into classified documents Trump took with him when he left office and then stored at Mar-a-Lago.
The FBI conducted a controversial search that recovered the documents.
Steven D’Antuono, the former assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office and a former senior FBI official involved in planning the operation, told Congress last year that he had strong reservations about the way it was handled.
The Justice Department ordered the FBI to go in heavy, D’Antuono said, showing up with a team of armed agents when Trump and his attorney were absent.
D’Antuono said they should have worked with Trump’s attorney to retrieve the documents through consent. He said he thought there was “a good likelihood” that the Trump team would have cooperated.
Former FBI agent Kurt Siuzdak, who now works as a lawyer and is representing the whistleblower, said:
“For whatever reason, unfortunately, the No. 1 criminal subject right now for the FBI seems to be Donald Trump. So you would think they would go out of their way to make sure that everyone involved in the investigation is completely unbiased because they’ve already suffered the issues with bias several years ago regarding Trump,” he said. “It would be a travesty if they’ve actually done the same thing again. The FBI was always designed to be completely apolitical.”
Flashback: FBI ordered Miami special agent in charge to scrub anti-Trump posts; Melania issues new warning added by Editor Two on
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