[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 26 (Thursday, February 5, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S516-S518]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WHISTLEBLOWERS
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today, I am here to again speak about
the New York Times' anti-whistleblower reporting. Obviously, it is very
misleading.
On January 18, 2026, Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer, and Adam Goldman gave
another big, wet kiss to their fired friends from the Biden Department
of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they did so in
an effort to intimidate, to smear, and to discredit brave and patriotic
whistleblowers. This has now become a pattern of conduct by the New
York Times, dating back to articles starting in 2023.
On January 30, 2025, Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman mischaracterized my
and Senator Johnson's Arctic Frost disclosures by saying ``messages
showed that FBI investigators took normal bureaucratic steps and
precautions'' when opening the case.
Now, was this supposed to be an opinion piece on behalf of terminated
FBI agents or a real news article?
Normal steps weren't taken. As I noted in my February 3, 2025, floor
speech about FBI agent Thibault:
Does the New York Times [truly] believe that it is normal
for an Assistant Special Agent in Charge to prepare case
predication for the opening of an investigation and then feed
it to a street agent?
Is it normal for an Assistant Special Agent in Charge
responsible for the most sensitive political investigations
in the FBI to be forced to resign for partisanship on the job
and then be found to have violated the Hatch Act for that
same partisanship?
These two New York Times articles are merely examples out of others
that could be addressed with the same rebuttals. So, in the interest of
time, I will only address the January 18, 2026, article that I came
here to discuss with my colleagues.
In that article, Thrush, Feuer, and Goldman issued the same
slobbering defense of fired FBI agents whose emails Senator Johnson and
I made public. So who does the Times end up attacking? They have chosen
this Senator, and they have also chosen to attack my whistleblowers.
First, Thrush, Feuer, and Goldman did get something right. Can you
believe that? They said the FBI is producing records ``in response to
longstanding inquiries by Republicans on Capitol Hill.'' The House and
Senate have finally begun to receive responsive productions to our
oversight requests as the New York Times has correctly stated. Some of
those requests date back many years. Indeed, some requests date back to
the first Trump administration. This isn't a scandal the Times would
like to create. The Justice Department and the FBI have an obligation
to respond to congressional inquiries.
To Attorney General Bondi's and FBI Director Patel's credit, they
have done better in that regard than any of their predecessors of
Republican Presidents and Democrat Presidents. Now, am I fully
satisfied? Of course not, but Bondi and Patel deserve credit. If the
Biden administration had done the same, I would have given the Biden
administration credit as well.
By and large, the records I have made public in this and the last
Congress are directly from whistleblowers in unredacted form to which
my office applied limited redactions or the records are from the
government in response to whistleblower disclosures that I have shared.
There have been examples in this Congress and the last where the
government had no idea what records were
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in the files of the executive branch of government until I transmitted
whistleblower disclosures to that same executive branch, the most
recent being the email about an FBI agent wanting to criminally
investigate Elon Musk. This, too, is not a scandal that the Times would
like to imply because that is called good government oversight, and I
have done good government oversight all of my career in the Senate.
Second, the Times said I called the raid at Mar-a-Lago, where the FBI
reportedly searched the rooms of the First Lady and Barron Trump, a
miscarriage of justice. Of course, when the Times said that, they
didn't include my full tweet. They left out the beginning of the
sentence where I said: ``Based on the records'' those records showed
that the FBI agents had many concerns about the raid and ``will not
do'' the search warrant unless the Deputy Director were to provide
direction.
These are records that were covered up by the Biden administration.
Indeed, the public ought to know and give credit to those FBI agents
for expressing their concerns and doing it in writing; in other words,
following what the law requires.
I gave the same credit to FBI agents who were obstructed by their
leadership and then-Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama
administration. For example, at that time, I released a majority staff
report just last year. That report made public FBI emails that showed
agents tried to arrest high-level Iranians but were stopped from making
those arrests. Those agents were stopped then from doing their jobs
because of political considerations relating to the 2015 Iran nuclear
deal that President Obama was so intent upon getting finalized.
Lastly, I released records this year showing FBI agents wanting to
investigate election matters but were obstructed. Those agents created
an investigative document that was suppressed, in part, because the
information would have contradicted then-FBI Director Wray's testimony.
The records show real frustration among the FBI rank and file. Again, I
made this information public to inform the American people and to give
due credit to those agents who were standing up for their work and
following the law.
Relating back to the Times article, the third issue to raise is that
Thrush, Feuer, and Goldman did something unforgivable. That
unforgivable thing was their article essentially accusing my
whistleblowers of violating the law. It does so, in part, by citing a
complaint filed by J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston. These were two of Jack
Smith's partisan prosecutors--prosecutors with a mission to put
President Trump in prison when he was a private citizen while he was
between his two terms in office. J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston
reportedly accused the whistleblower disclosures of violating grand
jury secrecy rules when I obtained 197 of Jack Smith's subpoenas--wide-
ranging subpoenas--that violated the privacy of a lot of people,
including a lot of Members of the Senate and Congress.
Senator Johnson and I then made these subpoenas public--almost 2,000
pages of information. That information exposed that Jack Smith, the
prosecutor, and his team targeted over 400 Republican individuals and
Republican and conservative organizations. In some cases, Prosecutor
Smith and his team sought communications with the media and the
legislative branch. J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston were a part of Jack
Smith's team; so that reported complaint they filed against my
whistleblowers is littered with a lot of conflict of interest.
But let's focus on this: Prosecutor Smith and his team sought
communications with the media. Instead of the New York Times
investigating and reporting on that major constitutional red flag, the
Times brushes it aside and gladly runs with the false accusations from
Cooney and Gaston against my whistleblowers. In doing so, the Times
also links a 2020 Justice Department opinion memo to the article to try
and support Cooney's and Gaston's whistleblower-chilling efforts.
The Department of Justice's opinion was scoped to ``leaks to the
press [of] confidential information concerning prosecutorial decision-
making.'' The whistleblower disclosures were to Congress, not to the
media.
The same Department of Justice's opinion also says in footnote No. 2
that a separate statutory provision exists that ``protects disclosure
to Congress using significantly different language and raises distinct
issues that we don't discuss in this opinion.''
The same Department of Justice opinion also says, in part, that an
employee is provided whistleblower protection ``when the employee
reasonably believes that the disclosure reveals a violation of law or
rules or exposes serious wrongdoing as defined by statute.''
Thrush, Feuer, and Goldman's opinion piece fails three ways. They
misled the public by creating a false narrative that whistleblower
disclosures provided to me and Senator Johnson were somehow illegal.
Moreover, a fundamental precept of whistleblowing is the First
Amendment. I thought the New York Times and its left-leaning
compatriots loved the First Amendment.
Here, in this January 18 article, the Times shreds the First
Amendment and, in doing so, undermines and devalues patriotic
whistleblowers. That is an historic disgrace that will age very poorly
for these authors, their editors, and the New York Times at large.
The January 18 article also argues that my critics say these
whistleblowers won't face reprisal because Trump is in office. Reprisal
isn't a condition precedent to be a whistleblower. And how dare the
Times make any insinuation that my whistleblowers haven't put
themselves at risk. Whether there is a Republican or Democrat running
the White House, whistleblowers always face real risk: ruining
themselves professionally, losing their job, all that and more. And
mine--my whistleblowers--have faced years of risk because their
disclosures to me have occurred over a period of years, not just during
the Trump administration.
Here, too, the Times and the authors try very hard to undercut the
assertion that my whistleblowers are protected by law. It is an act
done to chill, to intimidate, and to smear patriotic government
workers.
In closing, perhaps the most disappointing element of this article is
the quote from the Government Accountability Project. The Government
Accountability Project is a group that I have worked with for decades
on legislation and whistleblowers, and I consider them a very fine
organization, not only helping whistleblowers, but helping all of
Congress in our responsibility of oversight to see that the executive
branch faithfully executes the laws according to the constitutional
requirement.
The Government Accountability Project said this to the Times about my
whistleblowers not facing any risk of reprisal:
There is no risk, given that it looks like the entities who
ordinarily might retaliate apparently might be behind the
release.
This is a shameful statement for the New York Times and their authors
to make. So my office approached the Government Accountability Project,
and this is what they told us: First, the Government Accountability
Project apologized. They said about the New York Times article:
It is not something the Government Accountability Project
wanted to have our organization part of.
Second, the Government Accountability Project said the quoted
employee ``is a contract lawyer who isn't authorized to speak for the
organization beyond his clients.''
The Government Accountability Project asked the Times to make that
correction, but, ``unfortunately, they declined.''
Third, the Government Accountability Project said it didn't stand
behind the statement, as it ``violated Government Accountability
Project standards, because it was speculative rather than evidence
based.''
Fourth, the Government Accountability Project said the quoted
employee ``didn't know the context when a reporter asked him a
hypothetical question and has promised to check before any future
public statements that could overlap with Judiciary Committee work.''
So I hope it is clear. It appears that, based on Government
Accountability Project's representations to my office,
[[Page S518]]
the New York Times misled the Government Accountability Project
employee to get a quote, as you could expect, that would fit the Times'
predetermined narrative--so much for following the facts and the
evidence, as you would expect any journalist to do.
The Government Accountability Project also submitted a letter to the
editor in support of this Senator. I thank the organization for doing
that.
What really shoddy work by Thrush, Feuer, and Goldman. Thanks to
these three reporters, the New York Times is a paper of record when it
comes to attacking and undermining whistleblowers.
So I say to my whistleblowers: I will defend you. I will protect you.
I will continue to make public the records that you are giving to me.
And so to the New York Times, shame is not a strong enough word to
describe these unprofessional articles.
I yield the floor.
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