A 22-page statement by a whistleblower within the FBI to the Senate Judiciary Committee alleges that an agent’s supervisors instructed him to shut down his investigations into Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies last year, Insider reports.  The account is tenuous and sketchy, but should be addressed solely because of the feeding frenzy of rightwing politicians to exaggerate events for political benefit.

Set aside the source, which sometimes features questionable reporting.  The story, as told, is that an 14-year FBI agent who specialized in Russian-language operations was told in 2022 to back off investigating Giuliani and Trump allies.  The report notes that the agent got “excellent” or “outstanding” reviews from 2010 to 2018 and that he was part of the team that supported the Mueller investigations.

However, the story also notes that the agent was told to back away from the investigations relating to Giuliani et al in a meeting regarding the agent’s performance.  Here’s where some Columbo-ing comes in:  he stopped getting superlative job reviews five years ago.  He was told not to work on politically- and historically-significant investigations, but he wasn’t told the investigations into those people were closed.  Sounds more like a disciplinary issue rather than political cover-up.  But who knows what Jim Jordan will make of this.

The scenario, however, does echo something circulating since the 2016 election cycle when Giuliani claimed he has special information from FBI agents about an investigation into Hillary Clinton.  The whistleblower says his supervisors took heat from the leaders of the New York field office for his investigation into Giuliani, a former US Attorney in the district.