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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ensure that the executive branch executes the laws and uses taxpayer money that has been appropriated to do it according to congressional intent. Now, around here, we refer to seeing that the laws are faithfully executed as the constitutional responsibility of oversight of the Congress of the United States. In furtherance of that constitutional responsibility, Congress has an obligation to investigate the executive branch for fraud, waste, abuse, and gross mismanagement. I take my constitutional responsibilities of oversight very seriously.

From time to time, I receive information that requires me to ask questions of the executive branch in efforts to better understand whether any wrongdoing has occurred and, if so, what remedial actions will be taken and employed to cure the damage done. That is what brings me to the floor of the Senate today, focusing on Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault at the FBI's Washington Field Office.

Last week, while I was meeting with my constituents in Iowa, I sent a letter to the Justice Department and the FBI and also a letter to the Department of Justice's inspector general. In those letters, I provided evidence of extreme leftwing bias shown by Special Agent Thibault. Now, in his position, he is a very powerful agent within the FBI--so powerful that he can open and close Federal public corruption cases and investigations. He is a shining example, at the same time, of what is wrong with the FBI.

Andrew McCarthy wrote about Mr. Thibault last week and wondered what the heck has happened with the FBI. This FBI agent's leftwing political bias was exposed by his very own LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. There, in those accounts, he posted highly partisan material related to his superiors, matters under the FBI's purview, and matters under his own purview. His LinkedIn network includes current and former FBI personnel. The general public is able to review his social media content, which includes his political views, his political biases, and objections.

Thibault, under the title of Assistant Special Agent in Charge, directly posted a partisan article related to the LTG Michael Flynn case to his LinkedIn account. The article was a September 3, 2020, opinion piece from the Washington Post, entitled ``Why the Michael Flynn case still matters,'' which was about the ``Trump administration's abuses of the justice system.'' He also ``liked'' other politically charged articles relating to then-President Trump and his superior, then-Attorney General Barr.

Thibault's public political association doesn't even end with those examples.

According to his Twitter feed, which is also under his name, he mocked the election of one of our new colleagues, Senator Tuberville, and the State of Mississippi at the same time.

He said:

Thank God for Mississippi--state motto of Alabama.

I am not sure exactly what that means, but it is pretty clear that he is making fun.

When Representative Liz Cheney tweeted ``Dick Cheney says wear a mask,'' Thibault replied with this:

Your dad was a disgrace.

He recently tweeted:

Can we give Kentucky to the Russian Federation?

In response to a Catholic priest's tweet that was critical of abortion, he tweeted an anti-Catholic slur to both Catholic priests and then-President Trump:

Focus on the pedophiles.

There are other examples, but I think it is pretty clear you get the bias of this particular special agent. You get the picture, in other words.

After my letters were made public, he reportedly then set his tweets to protected mode and deleted his LinkedIn profile. His social media activity likely violated several Federal regulations and Department guidelines. The guidelines are designed to prevent political bias from infecting FBI matters. Such restrictions on political activity are heightened by senior FBI officials like Thibault because of the risk of improper influence on investigative matters.

If he projects this type of political sentiment in public, using his name and title, there is absolutely no telling what he is doing within the privacy of his office and in front of subordinates.

The fact that this FBI agent has the power to open and close investigations, particularly into political figures--Republican and/or Democrat--is cause for serious concern. His actions present a grave risk of political infection and bias in his official decision-making process.

Let me ask: What have the Justice Department and FBI done to oversee his work behavior?

Let me ask: How many investigations have been infected by this political bias by this special agent?

I fear, for many years, he has been able to do whatever he has wanted to do. Accordingly, such conduct unquestionably undermines both the Justice Department and the FBI because, at a minimum, it creates the perception of the unequal application of the law. At the maximum, his political bias has materially affected investigative matters that he has been a part of.

This is why the American people have lost confidence in the Justice Department and the FBI to do the jobs that those two Agencies are assigned to do under our law. Political considerations have infected these Agencies, and the cost is a loss of faith in the very institutions that depend on the American people's trust for the credibility of these Agencies.

My press release last week listed a phone number and an email address for the Justice Department and FBI whistleblowers to contact my office if they know some of these similar things that we need to know. Since then, I have had whistleblowers reach out to me about Thibault and others. I will have more to say on that matter, in the coming weeks, to my colleagues here in the Senate.

I urge anyone who is willing to speak to government waste, fraud, abuse, and gross mismanagement to contact me. And, of course, I strongly urge the Justice Department and the FBI to clean house without hesitation.

Transparency brings accountability, and my future investigative actions in this space will do exactly that. I am asking my colleagues to stay tuned.

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