The FBI struggled to maintain its public image this year after new information appeared to contradict past investigations and a band of former federal agents blew the whistle about the bureau's alleged abuse of American civil liberties.
"From the interactions I have, it seems like conservatives either consider the FBI the butt of a cruel joke or an outright threat to American civil liberties," federal whistleblower and former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin told Fox News Digital. "Compared with how that looked three years ago, it feels like a complete nosedive in public confidence."
The bureau became further embroiled in controversy over the last 12 months when Seraphin and other whistleblowers uncovered a number of faulty investigations carried out by different FBI field offices across the United States. With the secret investigations exposed to the public eye, Seraphin said retired agents are "embarrassed" to reveal they once worked for the federal agency.
"That is a sea change," he said.
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"Over the last year, the 38,000 men and women of the FBI have worked tirelessly to protect the American people from a wide variety of criminal threats and foreign adversaries," a spokesperson with the FBI told Fox News Digital. "The FBI and our partners made more than 20,000 arrests, which included violent criminals, human traffickers, and child predators, and located more than 2,400 children. We disrupted over 40% more cyber operations and arrested over 60% more cybercriminals than the year before."
From allegedly targeting American Catholics as so-called potential domestic terrorists to the acquittal of a pro-life activist whose home had been raided by dozens of FBI agents, here are five low points in 2023 for the bureau.
Ex-FBI agent colludes with Russian oligarch while investigating Trump-Russia collusion allegations
Former counterintelligence FBI special agent Charles McGonigal — who led New York's counterintelligence division and played a critical role in the alleged Trump-Russia collusion investigation — was earlier this month sentenced to four years in prison for charges related to colluding with a Russian oligarch.
McGonigal, 55, told a federal judge in New York City that he took more than $17,000 from Oleg Deripaska in exchange for collecting derogatory information on a different Russian oligarch. Additionally, prosecutors said the former federal agent helped remove Deripaska from the sanctions list.
McGonigal's charges left a stain on the FBI's investigation, known as "Crossfire Hurricane," which looked into former President Trump's purported collusion with Moscow. The probe began months before Trump's 2016 campaign and came to an anticlimactic end with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's highly anticipated congressional testimony in 2019.
Durham report blasts FBI's mission
In May, Special Counsel John Durham released a long-awaited final report to the Justice Department, which spans more than 300 pages of his years-long investigation into the origins of "Crossfire Hurricane." Durham found that both the DOJ and FBI "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law" when it launched the Trump-Russia investigation.
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Durham said his investigation also revealed that "senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically-affiliated persons and entities."
The Biden treatment
While Trump and members of his inner circle remain at the center of several investigations, the bureau faced backlash for declining requests from House Republicans to release an unclassified FBI document that contained claims from an informant that President Biden was allegedly involved in foreign business dealings with his family.
But after the bureau balked for months to turn over the document to lawmakers, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, obtained the internal material — known as an FD-1023 — and released it to the public. The document accused the FBI of improperly delaying or completely shutting down a full investigation into the Biden family.
Multiple federal whistleblowers told Grassley's office that the FBI maintained more than 40 confidential human sources on various criminal matters related to the Biden family, including Joe Biden, dating back to his time as vice president. But, according to Grassley, an FBI task force within the Washington field office sought to, and in some cases successfully, shut down reporting and information from those sources by falsely discrediting the information as foreign disinformation. That effort "caused investigative activity to cease."
Pro-life activist fights back
When the FBI wasn't focused on — or allegedly turning a blind eye to — the White House, the bureau was slapped with a $1.1 million lawsuit in November brought by Catholic father and pro-life activist Mark Houck, who was arrested in his home in 2022 by FBI agents over a previous altercation outside a Planned Parenthood. A 12-person jury later unanimously acquitted Houck on all charges of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
Houck filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department seeking restitution for what it called "a faulty investigation" and "excessive force" after a SWAT team of around 25 people arrested him in front of his children. The lawsuit alleges government agents deprived Houck of his Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force to arrest him on non-violent charges.
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Memo allegedly targets Catholics
Perhaps the bureau's most shocking moment in 2023 came in February when former FBI agent Seraphin exposed an unclassified intelligence document from the FBI's Richmond field office in Virginia that appeared to target traditional Catholics as so-called potential domestic terrorists, which immediately forced the bureau's headquarters in Washington, D.C., to purge the anti-Catholic memo from its system.
After the bureau said it would "never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity," lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government launched an investigation into the FBI and discovered that the bureau interviewed a priest and a choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond, Virginia.
HEAVILY REDACTED RECORDS SHOW FBI'S TARGETING OF CATHOLICS WENT BEYOND WHAT IT CLAIMED: WATCHDOG
Steve Friend, a former FBI agent-turned-whistleblower and current senior fellow for the Center for Renewing America, told Fox News Digital that "the nation witnessed the FBI's further devolution into an increasingly politicized law enforcement agency" in 2023.
"Whether you are a Catholic worshiping at a Latin Mass, a parent speaking to your school board or a pro-lifer praying outside an abortion clinic, the FBI is cynically weaponizing its investigative processes to trample on the constitutional rights of those Americans who are disfavored by the ruling game," Friend said.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., has become openly critical of the bureau in recent years, urging Congress to bring the agency under effective oversight and implement fundamental reformation.
"The FBI needs to be completely de-weaponized, and that would be the best thing not only for America but for the bureau itself," Mike Howell, director of the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. "Congress had a real chance to begin the process this year and chose not to."
"Whether it was the failure to set up a major Church Committee equivalent to begin a thorough audit, letting Director Wray off the hook on a contempt vote, inability to withhold a brand new Pentagon-sized headquarters, or advancing serious legislative reforms and appropriations cuts, Congress has time and time again affirmatively chosen to allow the FBI to continue more aggressively at its weaponized pace," Howell continued. "The failure to de-weaponize the FBI is a low point, not only for the country but for the bureau, which does not look like it will ever regain the trust of the American people."
But despite its growing disapproval, the 115-year-old federal agency, which currently employs approximately 38,000 agents, analysts and professionals, maintains that the bureau continues to carry out its broad mission to protect Americans and uphold the Constitution.
The FBI statement said the bureau in the last two years "seized enough fentanyl to kill 270 million people, which is more than 80% of all Americans.
"We pursued more than 2,000 active investigations into efforts by China to steal American innovation, and we worked around the clock to identify and disrupt potential attacks from violent extremists and foreign terrorist organizations," the statement continued. "We will continue to protect the Constitutional rights of all Americans, follow the facts wherever they lead, and speak through our work."
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
