Arecently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst told Congress in a whistleblower disclosure that agents in Boston were improperly pressured by Washington to open criminal cases on 140 people who had simply taken a bus ride to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington. The agents refused because there was no evidence the attendees engaged in any criminality, the whistleblower said.
George Hill’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee also raised new civil liberty concerns about the FBI’s Jan. 6 probe, including whether the Bureau mined Americans’ bank records without court authority and whether the agency possesses video footage it is refusing to release because it identifies undercover agents and human sources who were at the U.S. Capitol that fateful day.
Hill, a military veteran and longtime analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA) and FBI who retired last year from the Bureau’s Boston field office, told Just the News on Wednesday night that he disclosed concerns earlier this week to the House Judiciary Committee during a transcribed deposition, including that the Bureau analyzed banking data without evidence of a crime — simply to find Americans who traveled to Washington around the time of Jan. 6 or who owned a gun.
Hill said supervisors in the Washington field office pressured to open cases, first on seven individuals who came up in a sweep of bank records provided by Bank of America, and then on the larger group of 140 Americans who paid to take bus rides to President Donald Trump’s now infamous rally on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a mob overran police lines and flooded into the Capitol as Congress met to certify the 2020 election results. He credited his supervisors in Boston for resisting the pressure.
“There’s no evidence of a crime being committed here,” he said during a wide-ranging interview on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “We cannot open up preliminary investigations on someone for using a financial instrument in the District. And so they pushed back, and Boston did not take any action on those names.”
Hill also said the Washington field office, which led the Jan. 6 probe, did not react well to the refusal, escalating up the chain of command, but at each step of the process the Boston office held its ground. “Getting on a bus and participating in a political rally is not predication for a crime or a preliminary investigation,” he said, explaining why Boston resisted.
Hellbound and Down 