Grassley defends whistleblower protections from FBI employee accounts of wrongful termination

Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley defended, on the Senate floor and in remarks to reporters, making public the names of FBI employees named in whistleblower reports to his office.

The New York Times magazine reported last month on the first year of the FBI under Kash Patel, including four accounts from mostly former FBI employees who said the department took action against them after Grassley's office made unverified whistleblower complaints against them public.

From the floor of the Senate on Thursday, Grassley called the New York Times reporting biased against whistleblowers, and he said during a call with Iowa reporters on Monday that the New York Times reports "were wrong in so many instances."

"Regarding agents being fired, FBI makes its own personnel decisions," Grassley said. "I make information public so the American people can see how their tax dollars are used, and basically whether you're a private citizen or in government, you have to follow the law."

According to the New York Times, Tonya Ugoretz, the head of intelligence at the FBI, was removed from her position after Grassley's office made public FBI emails between agents who were debating the credibility of a report that contained a secondhand tip that the Chinese government was creating fake IDs to cast votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. In one email, an FBI employee wrongly identified Ugoretz as the official who ordered the report's withdrawal. Ugoretz said a review found no misconduct on her part, but she was offered only reassignments to lower-level positions, and she decided to resign.

In another case cited by the New York Times, Patel fired Walter Giardina, an agent with CR-15, a public corruption unit that investigated Trump for interference in the 2020 election, an operation called Arctic Frost.

Two months earlier, Grassley had sent a letter with allegations of misconduct against Giardina made by unnamed whistleblowers. They included a claim that Giardina had corroborated the Steele dossier, a set of later-discredited memos about Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016. Giardina tried to contest his firing, telling the department he never had access to the Steele dossier, but he told the New York Times, "They’d already decided to fire me, so no one was taking the interview seriously except me."

The third instance the New York Times cited involved Grassley's office releasing documents that showed FBI agents working on Arctic Frost subpoenaed the Jan. 6 call logs of nine Republican members of Congress. The logs did not include the content of the conversations, but Grassley said in an October statement that the subpoenas were spying and that “based on the evidence to-date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than Watergate."

Patel then fired two more agents who worked on Arctic Frost and shut down the CR-15 public-corruption squad, according to the New York Times.

An unnamed public corruption agent told the New York Times it amounted to a "vendetta" and Jacqueline Maguire, former executive assistant director, told the New York Times that it was problematic for grand jury material to be released without additional context.

Grassley, in his statement, defended his office's record on protecting whistleblowers. He cited other records his office has released that "show real frustration among the FBI’s rank and file" and the New York Times piece "misled the public by creating a false narrative that whistleblower disclosures provided to me and Senator (Ron) Johnson were somehow illegal."

Budget talks ongoing, ‘weren’t going very well’

Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate are negotiating over funding for the Department of Homeland Security as Democrats have expressed concerns that a House-passed budget doesn't go far enough on accountability measures for federal immigration officials.

Grassley said U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican of Alabama, was leading talks with Democrats, and the last he'd heard, "things weren't going very well." Stopgap funding for Homeland Security expires on Friday.

"We should remind everybody that there's a lot of stuff going on in the Department of Homeland Security other than immigration," Grassley said. "For instance, there's FEMA. With the deaths that we're having from the cold weather in the South, we're going to have to keep FEMA funded. And then every time you go through the airport, you get TSA checking you over, and that's something that's very important. So there's a lot here, besides immigration."

Among the Democrats' demands that Grassley said he agrees with are funding body cameras for ICE agents. Democrats are also requesting language that would bar federal immigration agents from wearing masks, undertaking enforcement actions at sensitive locations like schools, and entering property without a judicial warrant.

Epstein files have ‘hurt’ a lot of innocent people

Grassley, during his call with reporters, said he did not expect additional documents to be released after the tranche of more than 3 million documents was released last week related to the FBI's investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

"I would reflect, though, on what you've heard since that — a lot of innocent people have been hurt," Grassley said of some victims' information being left unredacted.

Grassley, Hinson comment on Trump’s beef deal

President Donald Trump on Friday signed a deal that will allow Argentina to export an additional 80,000 metric tons of beef to the U.S. tariff-free this year, in an effort to bring down beef prices for consumers.

Grassley said he understands the president did it to keep the price of beef down for consumers, but said he thought Trump would do better to work to solve the New World Screwworm outbreak in Mexico, so that the U.S. could important live cattle and at least slaughter and process it in the U.S.

Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, of Marion, said the move could add uncertainty for Iowa cattle producers already facing difficult market conditions.

During a Tuesday press call with reporters, Hinson — who is running for U.S. Senate — said she believes “it's the wrong policy at the wrong time,” arguing that federal efforts should instead prioritize expanding new markets, lowering food costs for families and supporting the long-term profitability of domestic cattle operations. She said maintaining the viability of Iowa producers remains a key focus.