FBI Whistleblower Steve Friend gave his all but was nevertheless unable to help the grassroots in Tennessee block undue overreach from the FBI in state investigations. Friend believes some FBI investigations are more appropriately handled by local law enforcement. The bill in question, HB2912, ultimately failed in Tennessee's Senate Judiciary Committee on April 2. The bill failed, not because of Steve Friend but because Jon Lundberg and six other Republican Senators killed it. Not one would bring a motion to hear the bill. In addition to touring the state to talk with citizens about a weaponized FBI, Friend stayed all day on March 26 to testify and answer legislator questions. He was there for both the early afternoon session, as reported by UncoverDC, and another session hours later in the day.
HB2912 was initially filed as a caption (placeholder) bill late in the Tennessee Assembly's session. It was later amended twice to make the bill more amenable to adoption by all parties involved: sheriffs, the TN Bureau of Investigation (TBI), the Department of Public Safety, Homeland Security, and the TN Assembly.
On Sunday, UncoverDC followed up with Friend and Aundrea Gomez, Tennessee's Regional Director for the Center For Renewing America, to discuss why this sensible bill failed. Both Friend and Gomez had worked ahead of the bill throughout the state, putting feelers out with sheriffs and grassroots activists all over the state. According to Friend and Gomez, the bill had widespread grassroots support and support from the state's sheriffs.
The first amendment of the bill more broadly allowed local sheriffs and law enforcement to investigate criminal matters without meddling from the FBI. The first version avoided affecting investigations that were the purview of federal investigations, like those associated with narcotics or terrorism. However, because some objected to the first version as too broad, the second amendment of HB2912 added language allowing local law enforcement (sheriffs) to be read into an investigation on a case-by-case basis. Friend explained:
"Some were trying to make it look like we were trying to stop local law enforcement from working with the FBI, saying it would do irreparable harm to the relationship. That was not the intent behind our bill. It may be that the TBI was worried they wouldn't continue to get their overtime paid by the FBI. But that [way of thinking] is a disgrace. So, for free overtime, you are willing to let your fellow Tennesseans potentially be persecuted? My goals were not just to smack the FBI but to empower local law enforcement. That is why we amended the bill to at least allow sheriffs [to] be read into investigations. This bill would have put a nice guardrail on the FBI. It is the ultimate "Back the Blue' strategy."
It is the FBI's handling of terrorism cases that brought this bill to life. Friend and other FBI whistleblowers like Kyle Seraphin and Garret O'Boyle have disclosed the egregious weaponization of the FBI under the Biden administration that has trampled on First Amendment speech and religious freedom. The FBI's "mission creep" has resulted in early morning raids and, in some cases, the entrapment of citizens whose cases in many instances should have been handled by local law enforcement without FBI meddling. Friend and his peers have given hours of testimony and appeared on countless podcasts to expose the weaponization of the DOJ and FBI at great personal expense that continues to this day.
Briefly, this final amended bill would have allowed TN sheriffs to have knowledge of and to conduct investigations in their jurisdictions on a case-by-case basis. When the FBI gets involved in cases, its agents have access to information that sheriffs do not—because of the classified nature of some investigations. For example, in investigations of national security importance, sheriffs are kept at bay on a "need-to-know" basis OR, more likely, they never have any knowledge of the case whatsoever.
Paul Vaughn, who testified alongside Friend, was just the latest example of an FBI overreach in which the local sheriff was kept in the dark. Vaughn is a pro-life counselor who allegedly violated the FACE Act by quietly speaking with law enforcement outside of an abortion clinic. Vaughn never violated the FACE Act, and yet, 18 months later, without notice, he was raided at his family home by the FBI.
According to Friend and others, Americans are increasingly vulnerable to raids just for disagreeing with the government. J6 defendants, "election deniers," and even parents challenging school board policies have been labeled as national security threats. According to Friend, policy language is being engineered to ensnare ordinary Americans who, in many cases, pose no national security threat whatsoever, all to justify and finance FBI investigations. Friend described what he saw while working at the FBI and what he continues to see even today:
"This has been going on a long time, and there is a real opportunity for people on the Left and the Right to say we may not agree on why this is happening, but we can agree that it is happening. Paul Vaughn's case is a good example. Paul's case is not terrorism; it's just an example of weaponization. So he probably would have been charged anyway because it's civil rights. However, the case that I've made is that the FBI is laying the groundwork to make Paul's case a terrorism case in the future. And then the FBI can work on it in secret. There will be a classification on it in the same way Kyle exposed the Catholic memo a year ago.
The message with the Catholic Memo was they were calling it 'White Christian Nationalism.' It was a hack around the fact that we can't investigate religion [because of the First Amendment]. But [the mistake they made was] they called it White Christian nationalism. That's racially motivated violent extremism. So they have conveniently dropped the 'White' and now call it Christian nationalism. However, it is still refracted through [the lens of] white supremacy, which is all you would need to generate an Intelligence Report, which would then justify raids and investigations. And then [the] media would start talking about it and now we can start opening assessments up to people. When you have the ability to do intelligence investigations which aren't intended for prosecution—due process doesn't matter, and weaponization is easy.
The FBI will open terrorism cases, and they wind up charging criminal charges. They can do it under police classified and we won't be able to know about it. Particularly if there's a task force officer who's investigating a Paul Vaughn, he can't tell the sheriff, hey, I'm looking for this guy. And the sheriff might say this seems like it's First Amendment-protected activity. Well, the agent can't tell them that without violating his security clearance, because it could actually make him criminally liable.
But if there is truly a terrorist threat in a particular county, the FBI should inform the sheriff anyway. How do you keep a sheriff in the dark?? He has the duty. He's elected by the people to protect them and for him to be completely unaware of a legitimate investigation? Why? Let's say an ISIS cell is operating within your area. You should tell the sheriff! Why would you not? But they don't and they can't because the sheriff doesn't have a need to know.
In the end, the problem has been the ongoing explanation of the way they interpret what is and isn't a terrorist. They keep defining new terms. It is all in the May 2021 intelligence assessment on domestic terrorism co-authored by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. One of the newer designations is called AGAVE—Anti Government, Anti Authority Volent Extremist. The definition of an AGAVE is someone who has a perception of government overreach or, negligence or illegitimacy. They just keep redefining new terms for domestic terrorism."
Aundrea Gomez is a local activist in Tennessee who works with grassroots activists in the state on behalf of the Center for Renewing America. When Gomez realized things were not going as planned with HB2912, she and Steve revised the bill to help push it through. Unfortunately, according to Friend and Gomez, legislators did not want to pass anything that didn't appear to "Back the Blue." Gomez spent the week between the first hearing on March 26 and its failure on April 2 running down legislators. She made sure the bill was on the dashboard so the Senators on the Judiciary would have the opportunity to read it before it went to a vote on the floor. Ultimately, Gomez said it failed for three reasons:
"I received feedback from one Senator as we were discussing the amendments that this bill would be an 'affront to law enforcement' because not one sheriff from his district contacted him in support of the bill. He did, however, get feedback from constituents who overwhelmingly supported the bill. Another Senator told her he didn't think the sponsor of the bill was serious about the bill because it was presented late in the session.
Other bills have passed even though they were presented late in a legislative session. It was just an excuse. And lastly, the TBI and the Department of Safety came out against the second version of the bill (which may have made things more difficult for legislators to step up.) So on April 2, Senator Hensley, the Senate sponsor, stood in the well and briefly explained it. Then Todd Gardenhire the Committee Chair called for a motion to hear the bill. Nobody on the Senate Judiciary Committee made a motion, and the bill died."
State Senator Brent Taylor seemed less than honest about his reasons for not voting in favor of the bill. Taylor posted the following on April 2.
The post implies he never read the bill in its final form. Maybe that is true, but Gomez says Taylor was well aware of the amended bill, the second amended version that would have helped with his reservations. He was concerned that the bill would have prevented cooperation with the FBI. However, the amended bill on his dashboard before the bill's introduction for a vote directly addressed that concern.
Gomez concluded, "I had met with several House members, but on the Senate side, I had been able to meet with Paul Rose, Brent Taylor, and Dawn White—although Taylor wasn't in at the time. I gave a copy of the new amendment to his assistant and that was on Monday, April 1. The other Senators' offices wouldn't give me the time of day, not even 5 minutes. So, I had sat down with those three and talked to them about the first version version of the amendment. All I was asking was for them to make a motion to hear the bill. And they didn't do it."
On a positive note, other states may adopt the model of this bill. Both Friend and Gomez shared that a couple of states reached out to comment on the bill. Friend mentioned a representative from Oklahoma reached out and a representative and various citizen activists from Florida also contacted him.
Notably, reporting from News 9 in early 2023 mentions a proposed bill (HB1024) introduced by conservative Rep. Rick West in the Oklahoma legislature that would "require federal agencies to inform county sheriff offices before conducting any raids or warrantless arrests within their jurisdiction," a similar piece of legislation to HB2912. The proposed legislation would also ask federal authorities to provide "an approximate date, time and reason for the raid or arrest." The partisan bill passed unanimously in the Joint Committee on Appropriations and Budget Committee in the House and its second reading was passed to Public Safety with no further amendments or votes to date.
