Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
Courageous Leadership with Dr. Travis Yates Podcast examines what it means to be a Courageous Police Leader. Join us weekly as the concepts of Courageous Leadership are detailed along with interviews with influencers that are committed to leading with courage. You can find out more about Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates at: www.TravisYates.org
Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates
The Consequences of Courage with FBI Whistleblower Steve Friend
Steve Friend's story is one of transformation and resilience. From a planned career in accounting to walking the beat in Savannah, Georgia, Steve's journey took a pivotal turn when an encounter with NYPD transit cops sparked his passion for law enforcement. Encouraged by his wife, Steve eventually joined the FBI, where his experiences underscore the critical nature of hands-on experience in local police work before transitioning to federal duties. This episode details Steve's unique path and the skills he acquired along the way, emphasizing his commitment to integrity and justice.
Within the FBI, Steve faced significant challenges, particularly in the wake of January 6th, where the agency's shifting focus from child exploitation to domestic terrorism raised questions about resource allocation and priorities. He shares insights into the internal pressures that led to questionable decisions and political influences that skewed the FBI's mission. His commitment to truth over "wins" in court highlights the ethical dilemmas he faced, driven by personal beliefs and upbringing. Steve's experiences paint a vivid picture of the conflict between upholding one's values and conforming to an organization's flawed practices.
As a whistleblower, Steve's resolve was tested in unimaginable ways. His decision to speak out against perceived injustices within the FBI led to severe professional and personal repercussions, including the loss of security clearance and threats to his family's livelihood. Despite the hardships, he found solace and support in unexpected places and continues to advocate for transparency and reform. His journey serves as both a cautionary tale and an inspiration, reminding us of the importance of standing up for justice and the potential costs involved. Listen in as Steve shares his story and discusses the vital need for reform within federal agencies.
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It's hard to say, I don't know. It's almost a nature versus nurture. I know from a very young age I was always like this, this really uptight or upright person, that doing the right thing was always the most important thing to me. I know that was instilled to me by my parents as well. I just even take it out of the law enforcement context that I went to Notre Dame. My dad went to Notre Dame. I grew up a fighting Irish football fan and I remember my dad and I watched him football games and the Notre Dame players would score a touchdown and Lou Holtz was the coach then, like that real old school and he was like they do it the right way. They don't spike the football, they hand the ball to the referee like they should. They're a class act and that was always what was important to me to do the right thing in anything that I was in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.
Travis Yates:Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored that you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today and remember our sponsor. We're grateful to them. Safeguard Recruiting owned and operated by law enforcement, and they are the answer to your recruiting woes. Just check them out and trust me, they are doing phenomenal work. I'm excited about today's guest. Today we have on Steve Friend. He's an FBI whistleblower, best-selling author of a book called True Blue and he's the co-host of the Morning Post, which can be seen each weekday morning on X. There's much more to talk about with Steve. Steve, how are you doing, sir? Thanks for being here.
Steve Friend:Oh, thank you very much for having me.
Steve Friend:Now, Steve, I know that obviously it's high profile and you're known as an FBI whistleblower, but long before that you weren't that and I'd love for you to just take us through your journey and how you got into law enforcement and then the years that you spent there in law enforcement, what you did and what you contributed. Yeah, so I was sort of an atypical journey to. It was not sort of in the plan. I'm a plan guy, come from a family that has a white collar family my dad's in a CPA, I have an older sister who's an attorney, younger sister is a pharmacist, younger brother who is an architect. I was going to go into accounting to work with. My dad, went to college for that and got the degree and along the lines.
Steve Friend:Actually there was an FBI recruiting effort. That happened in my college. I went to it just out of interest but didn't really spark anything in me and I'd always had a desire to do something in the military, did ROTC, was recruited but couldn't pass the physical. I'm asthmatic, take medication every day for it, so it just again wasn't in the cards. So ultimately, when I tried my hand at accounting and went through one tax season, I realized that that was not a good fit and I had a really stark moment where I was on the train from New Jersey into New York City and some NYPD transit cops were on the train getting ready to go to work and I just remember thinking they are probably going to have a lot more of an interesting day than me, and it sort of struck me as a way you could deploy just to your community and a paramilitary type of structure, a way to be a civic servant.
Steve Friend:So I looked into my hometown, which is in Savannah, georgia, and they had an opportunity there. They were hiring and they were going to pay for you to go through an academy and then you would just go straight to work. So I went to work for the Savannah Police Department, was a beat cop there in one of the worst areas that they had, at the Central Precinct, where just congested lots of crime, cut my teeth there, got into some narcotics work as well and wound up spending five years as a patrol officer before ultimately getting hired by the FBI in 2014.
Travis Yates:Well, that's a big jump, right. I mean, I think most people in local law enforcement you're approached with that at some point. That was actually my intent I was going to when I go. I wanted to work for the DEA. Don't ask me why. It was a kid's dream and they all told me at 21, you better get some local law enforcement experience. So I didn't care where I got it, I just applied everywhere and the whole idea was to spend three or four or five years there and move to the DEA. And one thing leads to another. As the story goes, I met a girl and I, you know I'd spent 30 years there, but so, but there's always a decision to make, because federal work's much different than local work. How did that process work with you when you made that decision?
Steve Friend:That's funny that you say that you met the girl. I met the girl as well. I actually, the day I graduated from the police Academy she was a friend of one of my classmates which introduced us and that's my wife and she is fluent in multiple languages was actually looking at employment with the FBI. I didn't wind up pursuing that herself, but then got in my ear about. You know, you should maybe look into doing that as a career investigator, regardless of if you're an fbi agent, dea agent, anything.
Steve Friend:You need to get that experience on the street first and foremost. That's really where you learn how to interface with people, because there's a common misconceptions that people have about police work. I mean, if you come from a military standpoint, a lot of people think, well, you just follow orders, you tell them what to do, and no, it's a lot more like salesmanship, yeah, and you have to learn how to interact with different sorts of people and do some conflict resolution and really pay attention to the details and appreciate the constitutional limits to what you actually can do. And there's no better way to do that than interacting with the public every single day in that patrol car.
Travis Yates:Yeah, in a sense. Those of you that may not realize this, I know they watch Hollywood and TV and they have this sort of aura about federal work, but local law enforcement is like dog years. I mean one year in local law enforcement in an agency like you were, it was very busy. It's probably equal to seven years of federal work or more. Right, you get a lot of experience really quick, do you not?
Steve Friend:Absolutely. I mean, I was just off of FTO I mean we're talking about within the first week and there was a gray gray in his hair, type of officer who was former army, had been a training soldier. So I did a field interview of a subject and then he backed me up. He came up to me afterwards. He goes all right, let's do an after action review. And he sort of talked to me about mistakes I'd made, good things I'd done. And then I just remember being in awe of this guy and thinking like man, I I'd made good things I'd done. And then I just remember being in awe of this guy and thinking like man, I can't wait till I just have that familiarization with what I'm doing. And he laughed and he said, yeah, you'll get the hang of it. I've only been doing it for eight months, so you do it. It is dog. Years is probably the most appropriate thing you can do.
Travis Yates:Yeah, so you got in the FBI. Obviously, you go to the Academy in Quantico. I've been to Quantico I the Academy in Quantico. I've been to Quantico. I only spent 11 weeks there. You spent a little longer there and, man, you probably had a bunch of dreams and aspirations. You uprooted your family and you followed the FBI and you just did the typical work, right. I mean, you did a lot of high-end things at the FBI. So kind of talk about how your early FBI career went.
Steve Friend:Well, everybody has a different sort of journey and they look at your background. So I came in with a law enforcement experience and they take that into consideration and they actually sent me to a pretty remote location. I was assigned to the Omaha field office. But every field office the 56 of them around the country have little satellite offices, called resident agencies, because you can't respond everywhere from a central hub. So Omaha was my field office, my division, but I worked in Sioux City, iowa, which was in Northwest Iowa, about 100 miles from Omaha, and I worked on Indian reservations, which is a very small niche within the FBI because there's only about 150 agents that do it.
Steve Friend:With what I like to do anyway, I was interested in getting into the criminal side less than the national security side, and the violent crime to me was something that I had done my entire law enforcement career and it was actually a way to impact small communities.
Steve Friend:Because of the way that the jurisdiction works. You have some underserved communities there that are very vulnerable and there's no one coming to their assistance. So you have the opportunity to put bad people who do really bad things away into federal prison where they're not going to get out for 85% of their time at least, whereas if they were getting arrested by a tribal police department, put in a tribal jail, at most they would be charged with a misdemeanor regardless of the offense. So that was great for me, and did that for seven years until we relocated to Daytona Beach, florida, in 2021 and took that transfer to get a little closer to home Savannah, georgia, is only about three hours away and then also to work on another issue that I think is probably the most underserved violation in law enforcement, and that's child exploitation, child pornography cases. So took that transfer to work there, but things took a turn pretty quickly when I was reassigned and told that that was not a priority for the FBI, and then they put me on to counterterrorism.
Travis Yates:Well and you know I know we're going to talk about FBI leadership at length here in a minute but that initial decision to send you to that location to work at the Native American lands probably a pretty good decision, because people may not know this, but that's one of the few areas where the FBI is pretty much the primary law enforcement agency for law enforcement In most jurisdictions they're going to piggyback off local law enforcement. Take their cases, help local law enforcement with task forces. But from Oklahoma I can tell you they have a whole lot more FBI agents that had been educated, that had to be educated in tribal lands and tribal security and tribal law enforcement. So you had the background to go in day one and start enforcing laws and doing investigations in an area that, like you said, is very much underserved. So whoever made that decision was on the right track, and so oftentimes we don't put the right people on the bus, so to speak. We use personalities, we use friends, favors, whatever, and we give assignments that way. But somebody somewhere although you probably didn't realize that Sioux City, iowa, was a glorious place to be somebody somewhere recognized that your background meddled you well with that kind of enforcement. So that's really good. So you initially transferred out.
Travis Yates:Most federal folks will try to do that at some point in their career. Get closer to home. You did that, daytona Beach, Florida. You had to be feeling pretty good about yourself doing a job that everyone would agree unless you're. Evil needs to be done at a higher level, which is human trafficking, child exploitation, things like that. You're excited about that. Tell us about the term when that happened.
Steve Friend:Well, it happened officially within three months, because I arrived in the summertime in 2021 and the federal government has the fiscal year turnover on September 30th and that's when they really start to assess where they're putting manpower. So 2021, we're in the fall. So about nine months after January 6th happens. And that's when the FBI went into full on obsession mode with that incident and just threw an untold number of resources at it. So they determined that child pornography was not a priority and they needed to assign me to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. And I'd never worked on national security but I was kind of a go-along guy. He asked me to jump, I say how high as far as what I can do to best serve the office. But then when I was working on the JTTF, pretty quickly it was apparent that we didn't have any work to do. I mean, all the cases that related to January 6th or anything else were either no criminal violations they were going nowhere or for J6, they were being officially investigated by us, but not really. They were being worked from Washington DC. We were just kind of going along with what we were told to do. So I went in my private capacity, I went to my boss and just said look, there's nothing to do. Can I continue to work child pornography and then make myself available? And the boss said that was fine. So really, for a better part of a year I worked again with locals. That was everything.
Steve Friend:To me was, how can I get to, yes, for the local agencies and assist them? One of the sheriff's offices that I worked with in the county they only had one deputy assigned to work child pornography. He went out on medical leave for a year. He had a heart surgery. So I basically took that office over myself, was content doing that sort of on the sly. Because of my timesheet, I had to say I was working domestic terrorism. Because of my timesheet, I had to say I was working domestic terrorism.
Steve Friend:And then, finally, things came to a head for me when, in the summer of 2022, so August, about 14 months after arriving, about 11 months after being reassigned officially then the orders came down to go and arrest a January 6th subject and I had a couple of concerns about that that I made my protected whistleblower disclosures about, and one being that they were going to send SWAT to arrest this guy. He had been interviewed a year and a half prior, said I'll cooperate with law enforcement. Whatever you need from me, I'll do. And then we didn't interact with him for 18 months and executive management in my division in Jacksonville said SWAT team's appropriate, we're going to send SWAT to go get him. And I was a SWAT guy I did SWAT for five years and I thought that that was a misallocation of that tool that presented an unnecessary risk to him and to our personnel as well.
Steve Friend:And then, secondly, the way that the January 6th cases were being managed were there's a departure from the way FBI cases are supposed to be handled. And they're doing it because they want to create this false impression that there's domestic terrorism around the country, when really most of those cases are criminal violations and should be assigned to Washington DC. But they're not doing that because it gives them the opportunity to boost the terrorism numbers and enhance the bureaucracy, go back to Congress and ask for more money and then actually senior executives around the FBI are getting sizable bonuses because of it.
Travis Yates:Yeah, and just to take our audience back, and it was so strange, being in law enforcement, to hear the head of the FBI multiple times say our biggest threat was domestic terrorism, and he would talk about KKK, and they would. They would show these symbols, like the thin blue line symbol and the Betsy Ross flag and be on the lookout. It is, it was so surreal to watch that. I mean, of course, this same idiot just wasn't sure if Trump got shot or not. Right, I mean, just kind of people were talking about I mean, it's just my lying eyes, I guess, are deceiving me. And so you're right Hyperpolitical, a narrative that had been promoted long before they knew any evidence.
Travis Yates:And you know, as of this day, there's been over 50 country, whether it's courthouses or local riots and whether it's Black Lives Matter. I mean, over a billion dollars of damage was done in 2020 and beyond with this type of activity and the FBI didn't seem to have that much interest in that. Right, and I'm sure you recognize that and the vast majority, while we were told it was an insurrection, they haven't charged anybody with insurrection and you're going to know this better than me, steve, but the vast majority of these arrests were trespassing, property destruction, misdemeanor crimes in local communities, and so I'll just sort of you probably knew this long before you were told to be put on this task force, and then it became very apparent, did it not?
Steve Friend:Yes, I mean, it was a significant story in the news and if you're just a consumer of current events, then how could you not pick up on that? And then, being on the inside of the FBI, I tend to look for national security cases or criminal cases, things that those are typically what I'd be following. And when what I was seeing on the news being reported was not jiving with what I was consuming inside the four walls of the office, that disconnect there was a concern to me. And then the other thing is the culture of terrorism investigations. The way that the FBI is sort of very okay with entrapping people was disturbing and I've learned a lot more about that since. And then to me, the ultimate cultural problem that now exists, being somebody who appreciates law enforcement, and actually was a significant moment to me to swear an oath to become an FBI agent. I remember the room, I remember being able to feel lucky and fortunate enough to say something like that that people who I revere said before me, and feeling that responsibility.
Steve Friend:But law enforcement's a process, right, the victory for us is the process. If we follow the process, we're rules guys. We're not system disruptors, we're system idealists. We follow the law, we follow the constitution. We follow the procedures. We gather the facts, we present them at court. We follow the law. We follow the constitution. We follow the procedures. We gather the facts, we present them at court and then the jury has their say. We don't take a win and loss like it's a baseball card stat on the back of our picture right, as long as we follow the process.
Steve Friend:If the facts of the case do not support a conviction, then the facts didn't mean that we're not a good police officer or FBI agent or a prosecutor. But that's not what's going on now. They're doing what they can to get the win. They're leaning not their thumb but their entire arm on the scale. And when I presented this to my senior executives, they were dumbfounded. They said well, we're winning. So obviously that means that what we're doing is right in getting the win. I was just telling them you have to be buttoned up when you go to court.
Steve Friend:That's the victory to me. I've been to trial eight times as an FBI agent, which is eight more times than most FBI agents ever have, and when I go, I don't care what any other case of the other 1,499 cases that have gone to court. What they've gotten away with there. They're violating people's rights and they're not following the due process that the constitution is supposed to guarantee. If it has my name on it, I want to ensure that it has that, and you've put me in a position now where it doesn't have that, and I'm not comfortable with that. So those were the concerns that I had, and the response that I got from then was Steve, you have the ability to raise your concerns with that because you get training on how to do that and you're following that. That's fine.
Travis Yates:You have an oath of office to the constitution, but your duty is to the fbi and you should set an example for your children and just follow orders yeah, that was a warning across the bow and I want to back you up a little bit, because this had to have been a pretty traumatic event for you. You have this idealistic view of the FBI. I contributed to a lot of local law enforcement. I hear similar stories not as crazy as the one you're about to hear where they thought their agency was one way and then they eventually find out oh, it's not this way. It had to be pretty traumatic for you because you'd been several years in the FBI, You'd done a lot of high-level things, very successful, and then you're confronted with this, Did you? I'm interested I'm always interested because you made a decision.
Travis Yates:I always talk about going right or left Right, Like you could have just kept your head down and kept allegiance to the FBI, no matter what. In fact, the vast majority of FBI agents are doing that at this very moment. There's only a few of you that stepped out of line, and we'll talk about what happened to that in a minute. What do you think about you caused you to do the right thing? Because so many people today are what way we describe it are just cowards. If they are going to risk anything about me myself and I risk a status. They are just going to put their head down and continue down that long path.
Travis Yates:What do you think it was about you that made their decision to go? This is what's right. Damn, for, whatever may happen, I'm going to do it anyway. What just kind of talk about your personality, what you think caused that? Because that is a unicorn, Steve, whether you know it or not, most people, as you know, will not do that, and that is the part that is the big problem in our country and in leadership today.
Steve Friend:It's hard to say, I don't know. It's almost a nature versus nurture. I know from a very young age I was always like this, this really uptight or upright person, that doing the right thing was always the most important thing to me. I know that was instilled to me by my parents as well. I just to even take it out of the law enforcement context I went to Notre Dame. My dad went to Notre Dame. I grew up a fighting Irish football fan and I remember my dad and I watched him football games and the Notre Dame players would score a touchdown and Lou Holtz was the coach then, like that real old school and he was like they do it the right way, they don't spike the football, they hand the ball, the referee like they should their class act. And that was always what was important to me to do the right thing in anything that I was in. Cheating to me it was a boring line, to me, just uh. It was not something that I was ever uh would want to live with myself knowing and and to even take it to my experience in the FBI. But they talked about being able to swear that oath and look yourself in the mirror and know that you did that, I wouldn't be able to live with myself knowing that when it really came time for a pressure test, that I bent the knee on that and it was choosing the difficult right over the easy. Wrong was never a consideration to me, and I think that that is a quality that you have to have if you're going to be effective in law enforcement, because there are temptations there, there are corners that you can cut, but ultimately it's realizing and accepting the fact that your job is not supposed to be made easy and you have to realize who your customers are and the people that you're there to serve. I mean, I was small Even now I'm not a large guy, but I was small in school, got good grades, so I was ripe for getting bullied. And that was one of the things that I can't stand is our bullies because they don't do the right thing at the right time, in the right way for the right reasons. They just go after and target and prey on weaker people, and I thought that that was a way that I could stay in the gap for those people that didn't have the support that they needed, and if my agency becomes the bully, then it's my job to stand in that gap and you know a view of my career with the FBI.
Steve Friend:I didn't have a guarantee of a pension. I never for once assumed that. I mean I planned for it. I was. I'd love to have it, but when my retirement inevitably came after 20 years of service, I wasn't going to have a big ceremony where they gave me a flag or a send-off party. I was just not going to come back the next day and sort of viewed my experience there like going to an amusement park you enjoy the ride, you pick up a little bit of trash on your way out and then you move on in your life. But that mindset is something that I aspire to be amongst people that shared with me. But unfortunately, the lesson that I learned was that I was really the black sheep in that I must have actually fallen through the cracks of the vetting process because they're more interested in policing, like Police Battalion 101, the German Reserve Battalion, where they just followed orders and tried to use that defense when they committed atrocities.
Travis Yates:It's so interesting. If you talk about the background of your family, how you were raised, that is pretty much the most common answer I've ever gotten when I've talked to individuals like yourself. And I know we're talking about the FBI today, but what you just said can be replaced with many local law enforcement. It's very, very similar and it's just incredible. So I want to, before we get into what happened, because you probably were surprised what happened, because you were doing the right thing and that was what you know and it wasn't until the reaction came that you figured oh, I'm outside here. Like you said, you fell through the cracks. You're not one of them. You thought you were family, but you aren't really family. They had already divorced you, you just didn't know it. But long before all of these charges started happening and the FBI put all these resources towards Jan 6th, it was so strange and it's so strange to the point where people still believe this. I mean, I seem to be one of the only persons that was outraged by what they did to Officer Brian Sicknick. I thought it was so outrageous. The politicians were using a natural death. The guy died days after January 6th and the media was using that with the same. You still hear politicians today say multiple police officers died on January 6th. None of that is true. Ashley Babik was the only one. And that's a whole other crazy story where they gave awards and medals to a guy that the Metro Police who were out there couldn't even believe what happened. And we read the internal reports to the Metro Police they were like we have no idea why this happened, right, and you would look at. I mean, it's just insane. But Brian Sicknick the news outlets said he was killed by a fire extinguisher. Then when that was exposed they said well, it was bear spray. Then when it was exposed, the bear spray actually doesn't kill you. They just kept on and on and they knew that. And what was so appalling to me is they knew they were lying. You'd have to be a complete idiot to not know this was a lie. So they knew they were lying. They did it for a political, for obviously to push political agenda.
Travis Yates:Those initial lies led into what I believe with the FBI. They had to continue the lies, right. So we can't just back out of this. We've told America this is the worst thing since the Civil War and so they're now charging American citizens that in a local community would have gotten a citation for property obstruction or obstruction or trespassing. They're now charging them, putting them in federal prisons and I'm not making excuses for the people that did violent acts that need to go to jail. Nobody is but to sit here and to look at grandmas and grandpas.
Travis Yates:And because I tell you, right now, steve and I have a friend that was there. He's a law enforcement officer. He was there and he was walking away from and I've heard people say this, but this came out of his mouth, I know the FBI tried to interview him because he bought a plane ticket that same time. And here's what he did he was walking away from the rally and he saw the doors open at the Capitol and he said there were police officers there ushering people in.
Travis Yates:He thought it was literally, thought it was a tour. He thought because people were walking in, he wasn't on the side where we see all, because the camera angles are just on one side, but the other sides of the building looked relatively calm and peaceful at this moment. He said, said he literally thought to himself oh, they're giving us tours of the Capitol. But then he thought you know, there's just a lot of people here. I'm just going to keep going to my hotel, but he would have literally walked through the doors thinking it was a tour and he'd be in prison today and would have lost his job based on what the FBI did to these folks. So it is amazing to me and of just that whole initial narrative. Do you really put a lot of blame into that initial narrative, people that pushed it on why this has continued on?
Steve Friend:The collateral damage to this is unfathomable to most people who are not in it, who have not seen what those cases are doing. It's even outside of regular investigations of potential people who broke the law. I mean, I was sent to interview a gentleman because we got an anonymous tip that he might have been there and if you're working in law enforcement you can't act on that. There's no reporting party I can talk to. He might confess to a crime but I have no proof of it, no physical proof, and I go knock on his door and was told to. When I pushed back and said that's not appropriate, they said you still have to go and he told me that no, I wasn't there because my son died and I was at his funeral that day and I made him relive that experience. And that's just one. I mean another woman who was there, who never went into the Capitol, was actually recording. She was aspiring to become a police officer and she thought she was witnessing crime. So she recorded it to give to law enforcement and when she did, the folks in the FBI said well, she was there, so let's try to investigate her and when we didn't see any violations of criminal law, call up the agencies that she's applying to and spike her from getting employment as a police officer. These are the sorts of gross abuses of power that we've seen and to January 6th at large.
Steve Friend:I mean, I sort of take a general step back from it and say, look, here's my breakdown of the people who were there. You had people who broke the law not that many, but there were people that engaged in illegal activity that should be prosecuted. But you also had professional provocateurs who were there, who are on video putting on different clothing to try to egg people into fights and get them to do things they're not really supposed to do. To try to egg people into fights and get them to do things they're not really supposed to do. You had paid informants who were there because the FBI canvassed nationwide all of us do. You have informants who are going to January 6th and informants are only paid when they're productive. So they were there and incentivized to gin things up.
Steve Friend:You had undercovers there, some in a security capacity, some maybe in other capacities. You had the other group of guys that were there who saw 2020, the civil unrest that was around the country and were anticipating some level of violence from Antifa or BLM being there. So they showed up equipped and ready to get into a fight and basically to give those people the beating their daddy never gave them right and that's never a good intent. But you can understand why you'd wear like a helmet. If you're thinking you're gonna get popped in the head, okay, they've been actually put through the ringer more than any, because they've been.
Steve Friend:The perception of them because of the FBI's messaging is that they're some sort of militia hellbent on overthrowing the United States government, without a weapon, mind you. And then the largest contingency of people who were there went to President Trump's speech. They were there and they actually made the mistake of believing that they had a first amendment inside of Washington DC, which now, in the alleged land of the free, has gone bye-bye. So they thought we can free. We have freedom of speech, we have freedom of assembly, we have freedom to petition our government for redress of grievances. And they thought let's walk through the Capitol as a show of solidarity and the mass of people It'll be like the miracle on 34th Street where they show all the letters to Santa Claus and that will motivate our representatives to pause the election certification and do the audit, which is all they really were asking for at that time and those people, the ones that just walked through the Capitol, which is theoretically the people's house.
Steve Friend:They've been caught up in the drag net because the FBI is very happy to manipulate the law and the rules on the ground because it's been enriching to them as an agency. They've gotten huge amounts of enhancements to budget. You've gotten people who have personally profited. They're getting $30,000 to $50,000 bonuses every year because their quotas that they have, because the FBI has a quota system, those quotas are being met. There are people who are advancing in their career because they message it as this is worse than 9-11. I had a role of management on the January 6th case so I'm going to advance my career on it. Everyone is personally or bureaucratically profiting off the backs of the American people who they're theoretically duty-bound to serve and are no longer the customer. They're just viewed as an opportunity, rather than the people who are actually paying the bill, paying the freight on this agency.
Travis Yates:It is so insane to think that the American people by and large don't know any of this. I know it's not by lack of effort on yours and others' part, steve, but I mean you talk about the FBI having cash bonus quotas. If a local police department had the audacity to literally have a ticket quota hey, write three tickets a day the FBI and DOJ would be coming into town talking to these agencies.
Travis Yates:So it's really, it's really crazy to see the double standards here, and so I respect you so much for what you've done here, because most of this would not even be known if you wouldn't be talking about this. But obviously you, this this came to a head, and talk to us about how this came to a head and what they then did to you, which, by the way, that's what cowards do. It's, a big sign of a coward is, when you're confronted with right or wrong and you're in the wrong, you're going to go after the person confronting you. We have whole political parties to do it today, right, where they literally blame somebody else for doing something they're exactly doing, and so, without you even answering I, they tried to. They tried to accuse you of many of the things they were doing, whether it's corruption or lying or theft or whatever it is, because that's what cowards do. So let's just hear how this came to a head and then what happened to you.
Steve Friend:I made my first disclosure to my immediate supervisor on August 12th. I came to realize probably a year or so after that that that that day the FBI opened an investigation on me. So my boss like a good.
Steve Friend:German uh had then subsequent meetings with executives where they uh said to I need to follow, just follow orders. Uh had a meeting with the top of the food chain in Jacksonville, the special agent in charge. She said I was a conspiracy theorist and I needed to do soul searching to decide if I wanted to be one of them anymore. I got, I was told you were not allowed to go to this arrest of this January 6th subject. They said you're, you're in fact you're not allowed and you have to stay home and you have to report yourself absent without leave. So I did that and that's one of the violations that they used to suspend my security clearance. So the FBI has the hack around whistleblower protection, because the law says they can't retaliate against you for protective whistleblowing activity. But if you have a security clearance to work for a federal law enforcement agency Navy versus Egan Supreme Court precedent says that they have wide latitude to suspend your clearance for anything they see fit. And when your security clearance gets suspended, you are suspended, unpaid, indefinitely, but still an employee, and that really is the way they try to bleed you white. So they suspended my clearance, they said for being AWOL, which I did at their own direction, and also because they said that I looked at the employee handbook improperly uh, put me out in September, september 19th, so, uh, about five weeks after making my disclosure, and then that's when the process really started to heat up. Uh, so I was unpaid, indefinitely suspended. My wife loses her job within a couple of weeks. Under some very suspicious circumstances, her Facebook account was taken down. She sent a private message to a woman, said that she was my wife I'm Steve Friend, the whistleblower's wife and her account from Facebook was permanently deleted. Within 30 minutes we had a letter that came from the FBI's internal affairs we call it the inspection division and they said there was a gag order on me. I wasn't allowed to discuss the details of my situation with my friends or my family or my wife or my attorney. I brought that to my attorney and he took that to the inspector general. The inspector general's office said that that's normal for them to do that, but I didn't have to obey it. But that's just another attempt. We had a hurricane hit. Hurricane Ian hit us here in Florida, so I was offline.
Steve Friend:The FBI at that time chose that moment to go to the New York Times and leak to them that I was unvaccinated against coronavirus and that I was under investigation, according to them, for shooting a firearm improperly in my backyard. I had to participate in a security division interview where they tried to get me into the Mike Flynn trap where you would lie to a special agent or to a federal investigator and they could charge me with a crime. But I've done hundreds of interviews and interrogations so I was able to evade that one. Then I asked for multiple times to get my training documents, because I had actually an offer to go to work for the sheriff's office that I helped fill in with, and the FBI refused to furnish me my training documents. And when they did, they told the state of Florida that they couldn't confirm that they were authentic. They could be forged, so I couldn't go to work in that way.
Steve Friend:I put in multiple requests for outside employment as well to ask for the opportunity to just have a job. I was unpaid indefinitely, my wife had lost her job and the FBI denied those requests. I sat down and a publishing arm came to me and said we'd like you to write a book. We want to give you an advance. And I said I'm not taking an advance, I'm not taking any money, I just want to write the book. If you publish it, okay.
Steve Friend:I wrote the book. No classified information in there. I sent it over to the FBI as a courtesy and they said that I needed to censor significant portions of it and I didn't obey that directive from them. So everything actually is in the book that I wrote and then have it on good faith from people on the inside that I'm the subject of multiple criminal investigations, maybe potentially terrorism investigations. I have caught surveillance on me when I fly. And then ultimately I went to Congress, testified behind closed doors, but ultimately did it publicly in May of 2023, doors, but ultimately did it publicly in May of 2023, the night before the FBI permanently revoked my clearance and then leaked that to the media to discredit me and then basically forbid me from ever going back into civil service again.
Travis Yates:Yeah, I'm just going to let all this set for a minute, because that is one of the most incredible stories I've ever heard. It should spook and scare every American of what is going on. Steve, you wrote a book called True Blue my Journey from Beat Cop to Suspended FBI Whistleblower. Everybody listening to this needs to go buy that book immediately. We need to support this man in every way that we can, and there's so much to talk about after you told that story, because I have to imagine there were some dark days. Right, and let's just be honest about it.
Travis Yates:I've talked to many, many people that have been victims of cowards. This is cowards and evil. This is the next step, next level. This is just an evil, evil things that occurred to you. You have to be evil in your heart to do this to another human being and the sad part is not just one person could have done this. This is a group of people, this is a unit of people. This is a chain of command of people, because nobody is standing up to stop this and and complacency is intent.
Travis Yates:And talk about the dark days. I mean because your wife's lost her job. You're going through this. They're trying to not just get you out of the FBI and quiet you. They want to destroy you. That's, that's kind of the next level. We have many examples of that in the past. Uh, these, these weak cowards, evil want to just destroy you. It's not good enough that they got you away from here or you're not longer on the department. They want to make sure that you're destroyed. So talk about there's no amount of preparation for that. Talk about the thought process and what went on in those early days.
Steve Friend:Well, I mean, I'm still in the process right now. I mean I'm over two years now unemployed, unemployable. So we're dealing with it every day that we can here. But you know, that initial shock, it happens so fast and that's part of the process as well. Right, I mean there's not a long runway.
Steve Friend:Even when I had my initial meeting with senior executives, I said to them look, if you're going to fire me, don't make me drive up to Jacksonville to get fired, just call me on the phone, I'll turn in my stuff. And they laughed and said look, this is a federal government. It's like turning a battleship. Things are going to take a really long time. Any sort of processes, don't worry about it. And then they told me to report myself AWOL within two hours. So the process sort of shocks you, even though you know it's coming. But I'd also already made my peace with the fact that I might not be with the agency for a full career the year prior, because that's when the coronavirus vaccine mandate came down and we as a family thought about it, prayed about it, and we weren't going to do that. So there was a purge afoot and we'd taken some financial measures to give ourselves a little bit of latitude there, so that was a good thing. And then also, having the support, my wife was initially shocked and, I think, very scared. She put on a brave face, to her credit. But then my name, when it hit the media, was leaked out. Somebody was able probably person should be hired by the FBI tracked me down, came to my door which could be really dangerous, but he actually wound up being a friendly and was tearing up crying. He was a Marine retired and just said, wanted to thank me for what I did and that was. She was there when that happened. I think that that brought her on, uh, on board with what I was doing and and just sort of setting an example for um, for our kids. And then also I have had the opportunity to develop friendships with some other whistleblowers, as there's not many of us as a couple, and they're the best friends that I've ever had in my life because we have that shared value system, uh, and, and that I think ultimately is we appreciated the job and that's really the morning process. I'm still in the middle of that.
Steve Friend:I mean, I was one of the few people I think lucky enough to have had a job that I was born to do that I love to do and I was just in the flow. Every day was great. I looked forward to Monday. I never dreaded going to work, but I also appreciated the magnitude of the power that is bequeathed to you with that, that you have the ability to take someone's freedom away from them, and that should never be something that is weaponized or abused or used to personally enrich yourself.
Steve Friend:And, unfortunately, seeing the people along the way interact with me they did in the FBI, from an executive standpoint, and even from people from the rank and file who are not willing to go along with that that cuts you deep. It really does. I mean I lost relationships with people who I thought were my friends, including people who were members of the wedding party at my wedding, who have never talked to me again because of it. But we separate the wheat from the chaff and the new friends that I do have are some of the best we've had and obviously getting to interact with people now in the last couple of years and just regular folks, getting speaking opportunities or something like that, is pretty unique and getting to meet a lot of people who you see on TV or in the news or something like that and you're just like. This is like living in a movie to a certain extent, but it's very stressful. It really is. I mean, I'm in it every day.
Travis Yates:Yeah, and, steve, I'm glad you mentioned the wheat from the chaff because I think people need to be aware that this happens, because it will shock you if you don't know If anybody listening to this, if you have this running with a coward, or you or they use some of these tools against you. The way Steve talks about, the way I'm familiar with who you thought. Your friends will disappear, like, literally, like people I'm talking people you've known for 30, 40 years will not only disappear, but they'll. They'll talk about you and you know for a fact. They know that none of it is true, but they're in self-preservation mode because they're a coward as well. You just didn't realize it. So but what you do realize out of that, what you describe, steve, is you actually. It's actually a good thing, because you actually know who your friends are. You actually know your wife actually loves you. You actually know that your kids actually respect you.
Travis Yates:You have a very clear picture of reality, because most people out there don't have reality. They think they have friends, they think they have associates, they think the department loves you. They think that none of that is true. None of that is accurate. At the end of the day, there are many more cowards than those with courage. And the cowards will expose themselves eventually, and you got to see it at a relatively young age and so you got a very clear picture.
Travis Yates:That doesn't make it easy, doesn't make it simple, but, man, there's some value in that. There's some value when God talks about that. Everything happens for a reason, right, and I think the difficult part that I know I've had in the past was man. I really want to know why this happened and he doesn't give you a time frame right. Eventually it will reveal itself and I've seen that in my life when there's been disappointments or I've dealt with cowards and I'm like why is it? Why am I going through this? Nothing to your level, steve. Have you seen God answer that call for you? Have you seen the?
Steve Friend:maybe it's not completely answered, but have you had a moment where you thought okay, this is why that happened, because I meant, or my purpose is for this or that. Yeah, I think that I've seen other people go through the same ordeal as me the small cadre and knowing that, the enrichment that that brings to me, and you're sort of on an island when this is going on. I mean, my wife is very supportive, my family is very supportive, but still, like in your private moments, you have that internal monologue and you think like, am I right?
Steve Friend:It's really hard not to question yourself and uh and I think that there were things that were providential, that happened to me along the way, that I cannot deny for one moment that this was supposed to happen. I mean things that were astronomical, the odds of happening, uh, where you know, I, uh, I, I came to my boss on a Friday and he said you need to think about this over the weekend because your career is at risk. And then the things that I did over that weekend uh, where I, um, I sent an email to a nationally broadcast radio show and just on a whim I thought like, well, maybe that'll help me in some way. And then I listened to the podcast of that radio show. I was summoned to go meet with the senior executives, so the broadcast was on Monday night. I missed it.
Steve Friend:I was listening to the podcast on Tuesday while I'm driving up an hour and a half drive, and that host read that email aloud on national radio and then reached out to me and I was just thinking like that shot in the arm that I needed before going in. There was everything. So I know I was on the right course, but again, it hasn't been revealed to me. And you make a really good point, I mean.
Travis Yates:God works in His time, not ours. Well, I want to ask you one final question, steve, and I'm not sure if there's an answer, but can the FBI be fixed? I mean, obviously it is corrupt at its root at the moment and I'm sad for for that, because that is not the way it was historically and and it's just so amazing to me. Of course, we haven't even got into the lawfare and everything, because I want I want people to know how important this is. This isn't about a political candidate or an fbi agent. How scared should a typical citizen be that this is what's going on? I mean, because they can point their sights at anybody, including me or anybody else, and destroy them, could they not?
Steve Friend:Yes, I mean, look, I explain my own trials and tribulations. They're willing to do that from somebody who's on the inside. What are they willing to do to someone who's not? And they have developed and cultivated a system to go after anyone that they want, whenever they want. I mean, they have the Patriot Act gave them the ability to have an assessment, which is an investigation of an American citizen without probable cause. They just need an articulable purpose so they can look at you for whatever. And they've labeled large swaths of people with overly broad things, because now they're looking at threats, they're not looking at crimes. And the most recent one that I caution you and all your audience about, the FBI has defined it's called an anti-government, anti-authority, violent extremist agave. And the FBI defines that in publicly available information on Google Agave is someone with the perception of government overreach or negligence. That's a domestic terrorist from the FBI standpoint. I mean there's 56 men who signed a document called the Declaration of Independence.
Steve Friend:I was just about to say that, yeah, Now I mean as far as reforming the agency, it needs to be shattered and scattered to the wind, but I don't think that we have enough representatives in government with the testicular fortitude to make that happen. But there are massive reforms that you could do that would make it better. And even if you still think the FBI is an objective force for good I don't know where you come with that conclusion, but I'll even give you that benefit of the doubt the reforms that I would propose I think would make an FBI that was good even better. So I would do a couple things. Coming out of the academy, new agents need to be working in a criminal investigative division of a local police department. They need to be there as a force multiplier for sheriff's offices, police departments and learning how to do investigations on bike thefts, not being immediately put on major, complex investigations.
Steve Friend:Secondly, I think that the national security apparatus that has been built up is completely out of control. The mission creep that's set in is driving the entire agency forward and that needs to be rebooted entirely. We need to do away with things like assessments and these wireless Section 702 FISA searches on American citizens, which do happen, and I think the best way you could do. That would be leadership comes in and says every executive in the FBI, over all the field offices, needs to bring every single counterterrorism case forward to us. We will look at them, and if any of them are for First Amendment, protected activity and any of these entrapment schemes that the FBI loves to run, then everyone associated with that will lose their clearance permanently revoked. You're fired, you're gone, and then I think that the most significant change if we could do nothing else but this would be, to me disarm the FBI. To me, disarm the FBI. Take away the guns. Make it an unarmed investigative operation, like it originally was. Make it a Bureau of Investigation. No ability to enforce, and when you partner that with getting rid of the quota system in order to affect an arrest, they can investigate anyone they want. They can't do anything with it.
Steve Friend:So what they can do, though, is go to local law enforcement, empower the chief magistrate there, the police chief, the sheriff, the state, the tribal, whoever it is, and say we are here to help you addressing the crimes that are really afflicting your area, because you were incentivized as the, as the sheriff, to bring crime down, whereas with us, right now in the FBI, we're incentivized to bring it up, the quota system. We want to bring crime down, whereas with us right now in the FBI we're incentivized to bring it up, the quota system. We want to bring it up so we get more funding. Let's assist the guys where they know where the usual suspects are, where they know the crimes that need to be addressed and they can say look, fbi, you might investigate Travis there as an agave, but my deputies aren't going to affect that arrest, so I guess you wasted a lot of your time.
Steve Friend:You know what we could do instead. Let's look at this drug problem that I have on that corner house. Let's get an investigation rolling on that. I think empowering local law enforcement because we have great cops in this country already and giving them additional resources and manpower and subject matter expertise will only make them better.
Travis Yates:Manpower and subject matter expertise will only make them better. Steve Fran, man, I respect you so much. This has been a very powerful interview. Everybody listening to this needs to go get your book True Blue my Journey from Beat Cop to Suspended FBI Whistleblower. Where can they reach you and we want you to let us know where can we support you at? So give us all that information.
Steve Friend:Well, thank you, let us know where can we support you at. So give us all that information. Well, thank you. Yeah, I, um, I have trying to plan fantasy camp here with uh, with producing content. So, uh, social media for me x, formerly twitter at real steve. Friend is, uh is my handle. My messages are always open. People can reach out to me there.
Steve Friend:I do a show called the morning post there, eight o'clock every morning, uh, across all time zones, so wherever, wherever you are 8 o'clock every morning, across all time zones, so wherever you are 8 o'clock, it'll be on there and you can see it from my profile. I also have the American Radicals podcast, which is on Rumble and streams also on iTunes and Spotify the audio format. I do that with another FBI whistleblower, gerda Boyle, and we put that out three times a week on Tuesday, thursday and Saturday. And then I also have a TV show at Patriot TV, patriottv, and that show is also called True Blue, so it syncs up really well with the book. The book's available for sale on Amazon True Blue my Journey from Beat Cop to Suspended FBI Whistleblower. Any way that folks can reach out to even just share a kind word is really appreciated.
Travis Yates:Steve Fram, thank you so much for being on and if you've been listening, please support Steve, check out what he has going on and just remember lead on and stay courageous.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www. travisyates. org.
