Johnathan Buma, an FBI agent who blew the whistle on alleged political bias during Donald Trump’s first term and warned that Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by Russian operatives, was arrested at New York’s JFK airport just before boarding a flight abroad.
Buma, a 15-year veteran of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, is now facing charges for disclosing classified information. Trump’s DOJ prosecutors allege he took confidential files from the FBI’s internal systems, printing about 130 documents marked as classified in October 2023 before taking a leave of absence. He allegedly shared parts of a book manuscript via email that included sensitive information about the FBI’s investigation into weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in a foreign country.
At a court hearing in Brooklyn, Buma was granted bail set at $100,000, though his case will be handled in California. He has not yet entered a plea.
Buma’s home was raided in late 2023. Later that year, he spoke to Business Insider about what he called political bias in the FBI (video below). He recalled presenting information about potential criminal activity involving Hunter Biden and Burisma to his supervisor at the Los Angeles field office, which led to the case being moved forward. However, when Buma raised concerns about Rudy Giuliani possibly being part of a Russian influence operation, his boss dismissed the issue.
Buma told Business Insider:
“When I went and presented to the Assistant Director in Charge of Los Angeles field office, he was very interested in the allegations concerning potentially implicating the Bidens and involved in business deals with Burisma, a company that was involved in alleged criminal activity. He’s very interested. He was adamant about packaging that information up and transferring that to the appropriate Case Agent right away. But during the same meeting, when I attempted to provide information that Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by individuals suspected of being involved in Russian counterintelligence influence operations, he shut me down, and the meeting ended.”
Buma continued: “I came to know that Giuliani had received $300,000 from Pablo Fuchs, a very powerful businessman who had deep ties with a transnational organized crime syndicate. He was based in Ukraine, and that was deeply concerning to me, especially, you know, having heard that Giuliani had been working for the president pro bono. My questions that were going through my head were, who does he really work for? I wasn’t trying to implicate Trump or do anything that would injure his reputation. This reporting implicates Giuliani. He was the one who was in ongoing contact with foreign nationals and political activists who would receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from these sources.”
Buma then reflected on the broader political context:
“And at that time, Joe Biden was not yet the Democratic nominee. I said to my co-handling agent, ‘Why do they keep going back to the Bidens? So what if this is the leading edge of a disinformation campaign to create a theme of derogatory information about the Bidens in anticipation that Biden would be Trump’s main political rival?'”
Buma said he started to face pushback:
“All of my reporting came under really tight scrutiny, to the point where I went from getting exceptional performance awards to being told that I was an inconsistent performer and that I had all these administrative issues. I don’t have a history of that the 13 years before that. So it got to the point where it was pretty intolerable, so I filed a whistleblower complaint.”
He added: “All FBI agents get annual training concerning the protected federal whistleblower statute, which says that if you see misconduct in management, you can file a whistleblower complaint. The managers involved and your chain of command are prohibited from committing any acts that could be considered reprisal or retaliation. From that point forward, the retaliation actually increased, and I experienced no such protection. There was never any mention or acknowledgment outside of an automated email response saying, ‘We received your information.’ No interviews, nothing.”
Buma said the retaliation continued:
“An email was sent with a brand new supervisor that specifically prohibited me from doing any more reporting on criminal matters, public corruption matters, or reporting on anyone related to the White House or any current or former associates of Trump. Now I started to experience personal attacks, not only suppression of the reporting. My reporting was corroborated already at that point. So if you can’t undercut the reporting, you undercut the person. So that’s what I was experiencing at that point. And I was moved to a squad where I couldn’t work sources. I was sent to basically the Alaska of LA and put into a position where it would be physically impossible for me to do any more source reporting.”
He added that his motivations were always about facts, not politics:
“I was never trying to drive the political process in one way or the other. I was only trying to make sure that everybody had all of the information, both sides, so that people could make intelligent decisions about what they want to do, policymakers or voters or whatever.”
In a 2023 statement to the Senate, Buma explained that he was “at my wits’ end” and filed a whistleblower complaint in January 2022 about what he saw as unfair handling of foreign intelligence cases. He also claimed he faced retaliation for speaking up and filed a discrimination complaint later that year.
After the October 2023 raid, Buma’s lawyer, Scott Horton, denied that any classified information was found.
Watch Buma’s interview with Business Insider below:
