US Justice Department paid millions to FBI agents suspended for misconduct: US representative

The United States Department of Justice has paid millions of dollars in settlements to suspended FBI agents accused of misconduct, according to allegations made Tuesday by Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin.

In a letter addressed to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Raskin wrote: “It has come to our attention that you have used your office to improperly shower government cash on (President) Donald Trump’s political operatives and sycophants, beginning with corrupt seven-figure ‘settlements’ for disgraced Trump officials.”

Raskin highlighted several of those deals in the letter, which sought additional details about the payments, including settlements involving an agent disciplined after refusing to investigate a white nationalist group and another accused of being in a restricted area during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Tristan Leavitt, an attorney for the agents, challenged Raskin’s characterization of the cases and dismissed the congressman’s concerns as “more a toddler’s temper tantrum than serious congressional oversight,” according to the Washington Post.

Several of the payments referenced in Raskin’s letter involve agents who have publicly argued that their suspensions stemmed from political bias within the Justice Department during the administration of former President Joe Biden.

In multiple cases, Raskin said, the agents' claims had not yet been raised in court or fully reviewed through the FBI’s internal disciplinary appeals process before the Justice Department agreed to settle.

“These checks are just political handouts and payoffs,” wrote Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. He later added, “The DOJ and FBI have already paid out several million dollars of taxpayer money to disgraced agents and employees who violated their professional and legal duties to the government.”

Raskin’s letter outlined settlements with five agents who, he wrote, received more than $230,000 combined. Some also collected backpay that, in certain cases, totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars. The letter noted there were additional settlements not specifically mentioned in his message to Blanche.

All five settlements cited by Raskin on Tuesday had previously been announced in August by Leavitt and his organization Empower Oversight, which represented many of the suspended agents in negotiations with the Justice Department and FBI.