A veteran FBI agent who blew the whistle on what he saw as political meddling in the bureau’s work was arrested this week by federal authorities while attempting to board an international flight at New York City’s JFK Airport. Jonathan Buma, who had worked for the bureau for 15 years, stands accused of illegally disclosing classified records in his upcoming tell-all book about his career. He drew scrutiny during Trump’s first term for reportedly saying during a presentation that he believed Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by a Russian counter-influence operation—concerns that were immediately shut down by his superiors. On Monday, the longtime counterintelligence officer was about to board an outbound international flight when he was taken into custody. Buma was released on $10,000 bail on Tuesday during a Brooklyn federal court hearing, and his case will be handled in a California federal court. He has not entered a plea, according to The Guardian.
Federal prosecutors allege that Buma printed around 130 confidential files marked with clear security warnings from his FBI office in October 2023. This information was taken hours before Buma went on leave from the bureau. According to the Associated Press, the court affidavit stated that these files included screenshots of messages with an informant, the identity of an informant, and information provided by informants. He also allegedly shared drafts of his manuscript through email and on social media, which contained information regarding “the FBI’s efforts and investigations into a foreign country’s weapons of mass destruction (‘WMD’) program.” In an interview with Business Insider in September 2023, Buma claimed that his work was being dismissed thanks to the politically sensitive nature of his cases.
He recalls an incident in 2019 during the Trump administration where he brought up two sets of unverified information on Hunter Biden and Rudy Giuliani. He had gotten the immediate green light to investigate further into Biden’s ties to Ukrainian energy company Burisma, but was shut down by his supervisors when he tried bringing up unfavorable information about Giuliani. In the interview he remembers asking his co-handling agent: “Why do they keep going back to the Bidens?”
Buma later filed a whistleblower complaint with the bureau in 2022, and another whistleblower statement to the U.S. Senate in 2023, saying he was “at my wits’ end” with his superiors’ “numerous acts of intelligence suppression.” He also filed an Equal Employment Opportunities complaint later that year. Buma’s home was raided in October 2023 and his attorney Scott Horton denied that any classified information was found. This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has attempted to stifle a tell-all memoir. Trump administration suspends $175 million in federal funding for Penn over transgender swimmer
Associated Press
In 2020, the administration tried to stop the publication of former national security adviser John Bolton’s book on his time at the White House, filing a lawsuit alleging that he had breached non-disclosure agreements and that his manuscript was “rife with classified information.” More recently, in 2023, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had his appeal rejected by the Supreme Court—part of a case that began when he alleged that Trump had him jailed as retaliation for his memoir. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges of helping pay porn actor Stormy Daniels hush money to avoid damaging Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, and ended up serving time.
