Prepared to hear the truth from a real whistleblower and
American patriot? Here's civil liberties
enthusiast, Second Amendment defender, and indefinitely
suspended FBI agent Kyle Serafin.
Well welcome back to the Sunday Seraphin Kyle's getting some
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I really appreciate the work you do and all the dirt that you
have helped to uncover. I know some is first hand and
others you're just the conduit by which the message spreads.
But without your courage and without the courage of several
others I've been hearing on your show, none of this would be
exposed. And just as Esther's cousin told
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Finally, Kyle appeared with friend of the show Steve Friend,
author of the new book True Blue.
They have both appeared on the Kimberly Guilfoyle Show, which
you'll hear in a little bit. But if you'd like to order
Steve's book, there's a link in the description box below.
So go check that out. All right, on to the podcast.
Let's bring in Kyle Serafin. He's the FBI whistleblower who
helped expose government censorship of our First
Amendment rights. What did you think about this
hearing today? It's kind of a comedy routine,
wasn't it? I mean, you saw that Matt Taibbi
and Schaumburg were in there. They're just getting accosted.
And at least they were having a little bit of fun with it.
They got accused of being in a threesome.
And we got to find out that members of Congress have no idea
who are doing the reporting in this country.
So that's also kind of illuminating.
Yeah. The reporters were laughing at
the members of Congress who didn't even know what was up and
what was down. Did you think that the reporters
cared more about the subject of the hearing, or do they care
more about finding out what their sources were?
I think that the Democrat goal. Right now is to.
Attack the messenger because they're not able to go after the
allegations in any way, shape or form that's credible.
And it's the same thing they've been doing to FBI whistleblowers
for, you know, for that matter. They just go after they try to
make personal attacks. They, you know, they, they refer
to them as so-called journalists, which is kind of
rich coming from the, the ranking member there who is kind
of a so-called congresswoman. She can't even vote in Congress.
You know, she actually is sort of fits that definition.
Yeah, it looks like she was reading off of notes that her
staff are prepared for her. Do the Democrats feel guilty
about collaborating with the FBI, the CIA, to censor things
that ended up being true? It doesn't appear that way.
They're double down on it. So, you know, I just try to take
the actions as they come and, and the actions appear that not
only do they not feel guilty about it, they're they're going
to go out there and try to make sound bites on it.
And maybe they'll make it on MSNBC.
And maybe they'll get a couple more votes or maybe they'll
raise some more dollars in their fundraising campaign saying that
the Republicans are really mean and they have all these mean
people that want to say true things.
And Kyle? Is the FBI going to get away
with this? I mean, looks like the FBI was
pretty heavy-handed when it came to censorship before the
election. Yeah, It's worth noting that the
FBI is sort of handling Twitter, and I'm sure they handled some
of the other social media, kind of the way that you handle a
source when you are working in law enforcement.
You give them kind of a carrot and a stick.
And what we saw there was that the carrot was you could be part
of the intelligence community, and we'll bring you in and we'll
tell you secrets and we'll give you a secret backdoor.
And then the stick was is that Senator Mark Warner said, you
know, we're going to punish you with some regulations that'll
probably be expensive and costly, so you might as well
come along. So I don't think the FBI has
been disincentivized. They actually got a bigger
budget this year. They got another $1.5 billion on
the bottom line. And that sounds like that's more
encouragement from my end. All right.
Any update on your whistle blower situation?
No, I expect to be attacked for the foreseeable future.
OK. At least you're realistic.
Thanks so much, Kyle. Yeah.
Appreciate it, Jesse. So, Kyle, you were an FBI agent
and a very good one at that. We discussed at length some of
the issues with the January 6th investigation in the past.
But given that this material was exposed, these new videos last
night in the Tucker Carlson show, I find this stuff pretty
devastating. Kyle.
I mean, we can all agree that, you know, January 6th, we'd all
like to change a lot of things, right?
No one's saying that with some textbook example of what a
protest should look like. Point stipulate.
I've addressed it over and over, but Kyle, based on my objective
reading of the situation, it was not an insurrection, and some of
the videos that aired last night appear to back up that point.
Yeah, 100%. So I mean, for those of us who
have been following this for a while and been watching it,
there was always video like even like in the days right
afterwards showing, you know, doors being opened by Capitol
Police, people letting, you know, Capitol Police letting
them walk by and not creating a human blockade with their, you
know, with the officers and Shields and stuff like that.
So there were places that people obviously got let in.
We always saw people milling about.
There was always an understanding of that.
And some of that footage is not even unfamiliar to me.
So I know that it was kind of groundbreaking to people that
maybe hadn't been following this and kind of just been looking
for the distance. But for those of us that have
been looking at it from the beginning and have talked to
police officers who showed up and responded and things like
that, it just wasn't, you know, there's two things that
happened. And you're correct.
It was a there was a riot and things got spicy in some areas.
And there's no doubt that people got hurt and property got
destroyed. And then there were also a bunch
of people that were just wandering around and taking
brochures and taking selfies in front of things that they were
really excited to see that they'd never seen before because
that's not unnecessarily an area they would go to NTC.
So that doesn't mean they did it, right?
It just means it wasn't like there's, there's no invisible
ink on the back of the Constitution that says, you
know, if you happen to get your guy who's wearing a Viking
helmet into the seat on the floor of the House, then you
take over the government. That's not part of the rules,
right? And Kyle, I'll begin with you.
Why did you decide? Because people always want to
know kind of the motivation, the process, because you have to
think about a lot of things, how it's going to affect your
family, your life. Why did you decide to become a
whistleblower? I'm.
Not sure that I had a long decision about it.
I got the, the e-mail that was forwarded on from another
supervisor in my office. It wasn't, you know, designated
to come down to the front line agents.
And when I read it, I immediately thought there was a
problem with it. And I made an appointment with
my congresswoman's office, who is the vet Herald in the Second
District, New Mexico. And a couple days later, I
showed up in the office, sat down with her law enforcement
liaison and community community outreach coordinator.
And I did about. Three hours of describing some
of the problems with the FBI. That was one of them.
They were a bunch more, unfortunately, because at that
time we had 10,000 Afghan refugees that were in two
different military bases in our little area of responsibility.
And so I saw a bunch of things that were going wrong there too.
As you can imagine, I brought them just a whole host of
issues. That's the one that took off and
went to Jim Jordan's office in a big way.
But there's a lot of things that go wrong in the FBI at this
point. Yeah, And tell us a little bit
about the background, you know, your career, your time at the
FBI. So I, I joined the FBI when I
was 35, which is a little later than most.
I'd served in the military. I was in the Air Force when I
was in my late 20s. Before that, I had done finance
at a movie studio and I'd run restaurants and I'd work for
Dell computers and did corporate sales.
And I did a whole bunch of other kind of like regular guy jobs
and then kind of ended up in the FB is space with a lot more
experience than many of my Quantico classmates.
I was 10 years older than than a handful of them.
And you know, you just have a different sense of what's right
and wrong. I think if you haven't more
experience in the world, which I did.
And as that kind of went on, it led me to work five years with
the Washington field office. I, I did 2 years of
counterintelligence work working against the Chinese threat,
which is obviously significant. I spent three years on a, a
specialty surveillance team that did a little bit of everything.
So I got to taste a little bit of all the bureau's kind of
flavors. We did some counterterrorism
work is kind of a, a very specific specialty.
And then I did a bunch of white collar and drugs and gangs and
like you name it, I've got a little bit of everything out
there. And then I just tried to get out
of the politics of it. And I ended up New Mexico for a
year. And that's when I got into the
politics of it for real, which was doing this whistleblower
thing. So it's kind of a God has a
different plan than what I did, obviously.
Absolutely. He always does.
So talk to us a little bit more about what you saw that shocked
your conscience and made you want to speak out that you said,
wow, this is outrageous and something needs to be done about
it. So I brought the the things to
my congresswoman's attention and then the retribution against me
was really significant. And this also combined with some
of the things that went on with the COVID mandates that
happened. I'm a pro-life guy.
I'm a lifelong Catholic and, you know, come and go on from the
church. But at this point, my wife and I
are, are steadfast in it. It's just been reassuring our
faith. So it's kind of a weird thing to
see when you're being targeted for your faith, you're.
Being targeted for doing what? You're told is the right thing
to do, which is call out when there's a misstep.
And the misstep that I specifically called out was not
that the FBI was going to be investigating parents.
It's what appeared to be lies by the attorney general in front of
Congress. So that was a, you know, an
allegation of perjury that I brought forward.
And the, you know, the FBI just came at me all the way.
They kicked me out of the office.
They put me on a wall, which I didn't even know as a thing for
civil servants. And then when they did let me
come back in, they stripped me of all my duties, my
responsibilities. They put literally put me in a
corner. I sat in a corner for six weeks
with no cases. And even though they called me
an insider threat, which is to say like a traitor or a
potential spy. They moved me from a criminal
job to a national security squad, assigned me no cases, and
then eventually pulled my security clearance, kicked me
out, took my paycheck. And you know, at that point I
ended up going to talk to Dan Bongino about it all because you
only really have one court that you can go to as a whistle
blower. It turns out as a federal
whistle blower, you've got to go to the court of public opinion,
which is why we're we're talking right now is I just made a
decision that this is America's information and it's not mine.
And I'm not going to let the FBI steamroll me and my family.
Yeah, absolutely. It is America's information well
stated. It's just disgraceful that
you're doing your job, you're honoring your country, and they
tried to destroy you, destroy your family, take your
livelihood, ostracize you within their own agency.
Were there any conversations with some of your your coworkers
or superiors there that you felt were really, you know,
inappropriate and really showed the bias that they had?
Yes and no. So when it was all going on and
I was still in the office, I got kind of this feedback.
Like, you know, I don't think this is that big a deal and this
shouldn't be a thing. And you know, you're going to
come back to work and it's going to be fine.
And that was my immediate supervisor on the second squad I
was on. But the, the real telling thing
is that I had colleagues that were apparently testifying
behind my back to the equal opportunity investigators and
saying, you know, all these wild things about me, that I was
either racist, sexist or homophobic.
They couldn't pinpoint which one.
But I was one of those things, obviously, which led me to
believe that I really wasn't pushing the envelope because I
obviously could have been transphobic and xenophobic too,
if I was really ambitious. So I missed out on some
opportunities. That's exactly right.
So, you know, and then the real telling part is after you get
kicked out of the office like that, the number of people that
have reached out to me from the FBI is very, very, very small,
at least in the office that I was in.
There's really only one guy in that office that I still am able
to speak to because they just don't speak to me.
That being said, people that I've known throughout my time,
you know, in Washington, DC and stuff, we're still in a good
contact and they know my character and we spend a lot of
time working together. So I hear from them.
But it is telling that the people in the office really got
chilled and, and, you know, probably felt the fear of God of
losing their own paycheck and pension.
So they kind of just. Yeah, you know, loyal to the
paycheck, right? They're thinking, OK, if I do
anything like this or if I associate with him, that
something's going to happen to me.
It's it's awful. It's.
We call it the golden handcuff. The golden handcuff.
OK, yeah, it's a kind of a lonely place to be, I have to
say, right? And then.
But then you've got other individuals that come out and
speak out, which is great. And Steve, I want to follow up
on with you on that. Talk about your career and tell
the folks like what it means you know for you when you became an
FBI agent and the process that you went through and especially
as it relates to the threat tags with the January 6th
investigations. Well, thank you very much.
I joined the FBI a couple years before Kyle did.
I was initially sent to the Midwest where I worked for seven
years on Indian reservations, and that's sort of relevant to
my journey because it gave me a lot of repetitions on case
management. I opened up about 200 cases in
my time there and then also had the opportunity to go to trial
multiple times, which is pretty unusual for the FBI.
So when I eventually relocated my family to Florida in 2021
with the understanding that I was going to be working child
pornography investigations and then subsequently was told that
those were no longer a priority and I needed to focus on
domestic terrorism, AKA January 6th.
I brought that background with me and looked at the the cases
and the way that they were being handled and immediately realized
that the FBI is departing from its rules with regard to the
case management. And my initial concern was
essentially, if we will go to trial, I want to win if it's a
righteous case. And so regardless of the
politics of it or what you think happened that day, if the
Department of Justice brings charges, I was taking it on good
faith that they were, you know, they were righteous.
And my fear was that we were not turning over the necessary
exculpatory evidence and advising these defendants about
these atypical practices. And it could come back to bite
us at trial. And essentially, I would wind up
sitting there in front of of a defense attorney and having to
answer, Asian friend, this is your case.
Did you do anything on it? And I would say no.
Yeah, it's, it's an unusual position to find yourself in.
But you know what I think people also want to know, Steve, is how
does this all kind of work inside the Bureau?
Is it coming from the top down? You know, what is the chain of
command? Because honestly, it's terrible.
Like you're an FBI agent. There's been so much, you know,
in the press where people are upset and feel like it's so
politicized. I'm quite sure because the
existence of both of you, there are good people inside the FBI.
How is this happening, this level of dysfunction and the
politicization where it's just like these targeted, focused
investigations for a political purpose?
I think it's a combination of two things.
I think that there are the true believers and they're bringing
these cases because they indeed do view a lot of the right wing
Americans as the threat. But I think a larger component
of that is the integrated program management protocols
that the FBI has for itself. Or think of it as a local Police
Department has a quota for writing traffic tickets.
So essentially they set these metrics themselves to achieve
and those are tied to funding for the FBI as a whole for each
individual field office. And then ultimately for the
senior executive service members who run each field office, their
compensation is tied to hitting these metrics.
So it creates an A perverse incentive to generate cases and
certain statistical accomplishments and quantity
over quality and integrity of those cases.
Yeah. It's interesting because you
said it, it does provide a perverse incentive because it
sounds like it's sort of a a system where you benefit if you
bring these things forward and in what way they get promotions
etcetera. Because people are then willing
to abandon sort of their ethics or morality and just go ahead
and be part of these politicized investigations.
So I think once you're at the senior executive service level,
the rungs are kind of growing short at the top of that.
There's definitely ambition at that rank, but it's really more
income to me, at least for the middle management types.
And when you have this political narrative that's something like
January 6th is the largest, most important investigation that's
gone on in the FBI since the Civil War now I guess according
to the Democrats. And you have an ambition to rise
in the ranks and the FBI, you want to sink your teeth and
hooks into that case. So you have individuals who are
just ambitious and they are willing to put their head down
and do what they're told in order to claim that managerial
responsibility and and ultimately promote.
That's like mercenaries, you know, and just regardless of,
you know, the consequences. But you know, honestly, Stephen,
when you think about it, did you like and respect and I'll ask
Kyle the same question, you know, the majority of the men
and women that you worked with in the agency?
Or do you think there's just some serious damage and flaws
there that need to be vastly corrected?
I was very fortunate in my career to work in two offices
that were relatively small, sort of high speed, low drag.
So I shared a lot of sentiments with those individuals where we
just wanted to work and do the good work that was there.
I think though, that there is a cultural gap between the
management and the rank and file agents in the FBI that has just
been exposed in the last few years.
And, and there's definitely a lack of connection between those
individuals who just kind of see it as their, their trip on up
the ladder. And the, and the other folks
like myself and like Kyle, who just really just joined the job,
joined the FBI to do the job of an FBI agent, not to be promoted
or to retire with a, with a cushy pension.
It was always about the oath of office that we took from the
very beginning. It was something that I took
seriously. And, and, and unfortunately it's
I've come to realize that too many people are viewing that
oath of office as being similar to an iPhone user agreement and
they just click agree. Unbelievable.
That's a that's a very good analogy.
I mean, Kyle, what do you think about what about your personal
experience in working different branches departments that you
did and the men and women that you came across?
So there seems to be kind of two types of agents specifically now
the Bureau has 3738 thousand total employees.
So the agents only make up about 13 or 14,000 of that.
So it's by no means the majority of the the people that actually
work in the FBI. But when you kind of separate
out agents, there's two types. There's ones that want to work
cases and they're generally almost fighting to stay at the
bottom. They're like a diver with that
won't get, you know, rid of a weight belt.
They're hanging out at the bottom where they can do the
work. They get paid commensurate with
even the middle management when they've been there long enough.
So there's no. Real incentive for them to move
into management, at least not financially unless they think
that they're going to put this 10 year kind of, you know, trial
on, on their family where they're going to just, you get
bumped around to different possibilities and places.
And, you know, they may have to go back and forth to DC because
I was in DCI, got to see the revolving door that goes between
the Washington Field office and the headquarters building at J
Edgar Hoover Building. And that is a very different
animal altogether. Now, one of my buddies is a
little bit more cynical than I am, said that the a GS15 and the
FBI is someone who's never said no to a bad idea.
That's going to be the assistant special agents in charge and
above. And and that makes every single
person who's a senior executive fit into that category.
I don't think he's actually wrong anymore.
The more I kind of see it, these people are willing to go along
to get along. They have that golden handcuff.
They're looking to put, you know, another $10,000 a year on
their pension or whatever it looks like they're going to do.
If they can get a $30,000 bonus for three years in a row, then
they will add $10,000 to their actual pension.
And apparently that's enough for them to, to care about, you
know, making bad decisions or, or not throwing the flag when
there is a bad decision. And in the meantime, you got
guys like Steve who are literally fighting to not become
a supervisor, who are resisting the request for them to put in
that package. And they stay there working the
cases until, you know, they're 20 or 25 years mandatory
retirement, and then they're out.
They never get a chance to make that management change.
So I do think that there's a kind of a toxic culture and a
reverse incentive for the kind of people that want to be really
good agents. Yeah, that's a shame, you know,
because it used to be an agency people really, you know,
respected and looked up to and I always try to be positive, you
know, find the problem that, you know, bring the solution and
Kyle go to you on this then gets Stevens impression.
But so if the FBI leadership actually really wanted to change
this, you know? Perverse incentivization that
they do and to right these wrongs, what would it look like?
Like what do they need to do to actually fix it?
It's it's probably a really complicated question because
they're not the ones necessarily setting the agenda.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of this stuff was set in motion on
September 11th or September 12th of 2001.
And when the FBI accepted the national security mission and
the domestic, you know, intelligence mission, they
really moved into an intelligence agency that has a
law enforcement capability and that is secret police level
stuff. It didn't, you know, it took
years for that, that culture to take over.
But intelligence communities are very, very different.
Intelligence agencies are different than law enforcement
agencies, and the burden of proof and the standards and the
process, they're all sort of antithetical to each other.
And so as you know, as a prosecutor, you would know that
you've got to go through certain things.
There's due process, there is discovery.
You have to know that all the information you have has to meet
a certain standard if you want to get it, whether it's probable
cause and so on. When it comes to intelligence is
a very different animal. They believe that they're
entitled to that information because the mission is good and
it's never going to be seen in court.
But when you actually have the ability to take that information
that shouldn't ever be see the light of day in in a court
proceeding and you can reconstruct it under legal
processes. It's it's, I don't know if you
can even salvage something like this.
And that's why it's so dangerous, because it's so
pervasive that it's probably 60 or 70% of the Bureau is now
intelligence focused. And so, you know, far less of it
is based on the actual law enforcement mission that most
Americans have as front of mind awareness.
Thanks for listening to the Kyle Seraphin Show.
Be sure to follow him on Twitter and Truth at Kyle Seraphin.