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FBI raids home of Johnathan Buma, a bureau whistleblower who claimed his Trumpworld investigations were suppressed

Mattathias Schwartz
Updated Tue, November 14, 2023

FBI special agent and whistleblower Johnathan Buma alleged that the bureau stymied investigative leads that implicated Rudy Giuliani. On Monday, federal agents executed a search warrant at his Orange County home.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty, and Insider

• FBI agents raided the Orange County home of Special Agent Johnathan Buma on Monday.

• Buma told Congress that the bureau forced him to stop investigating Rudy Giuliani.

• Documents show Buma is suspected of mishandling classified information, which his attorney denies.

A squad of federal agents in tactical gear executed a search warrant on Monday at the home of one of their own, FBI special agent Johnathan Buma, according to Buma's attorney, Scott Horton.

A search warrant reviewed by Business Insider states that Buma is suspected of violating laws against mishandling classified information, and a property receipt lists "classified material" and "possible classified material" as being among the items seized.

Horton said that both the allegations and the property receipts were false.

"There was no classified information found by the raid," he said. "I know that from talking to my client."

The FBI declined to comment.

In July, Buma filed protected whistleblower disclosures alleging bureau mismanagement and retaliation. His 22-page disclosure to the Senate Judiciary Committee alleges that Buma was ordered not to investigate Donald Trump's associates and that he was forced to shut down his most valuable confidential sources. It also describes evidence collected by Buma indicating that Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, was compromised by a Russian intelligence asset.

After his Senate disclosure was leaked, Buma, a 15-year FBI veteran who specializes in counter-intelligence investigations, spoke about his allegations in an interview with the New Yorker and a video interview with Business Insider.

Last month, one of Buma's sources, Charles Johnson, claimed that he had recruited Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel to be an FBI confidential human source with the code name "Philosopher." Business Insider and the Atlantic both confirmed that Thiel was indeed an FBI informant as well as details of Thiel's reporting to the FBI about approaches by the Kremlin.

Horton, Buma's attorney, told BI that the Monday raid at Buma's home in Orange County, California, was retaliation for Buma's actions as a whistleblower. "They deployed the level of personnel that would be customary for a major mafia figure for a single active-duty FBI agent suspected of having cooperated with a congressional investigation," Horton said. "That is his offense. This continues to raise grave concerns about how the bureau's counter-intelligence activities targeting the Russian intelligence services are undermined by political shenanigans on the part of senior bureau management."

The Buma raid raises larger concerns about the bureau's treatment of whistleblowers more generally, Horton added: "Under federal law, whistleblowers who cooperate with Congress and who file whistleblower complaints are strictly protected against retaliation. Senior management of the Bureau are signaling that they believe they are not bound by this law."

Property receipts reviewed by Business Insider show that the bureau seized a raft of documents and an extensive array of electronics from Buma's home, where he lives with his wife and three of their school-aged children: nine laptops, three smartwatches, six tablets, two phones, and one desktop computer. Horton said that most of those devices belong to his family, for use in his wife's work and their children's education.

At the time of the raid, Buma was on medical leave from the bureau, Horton added; he had already turned in his gun, badge, bureau car and bureau phone at an appointment with his supervisor earlier on Monday.