FBI promotes key J6 persecutor
The FBI is under fire from conservatives after promoting an agent who was instrumental in persecuting the January 6th defendants.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that Steven J. Jensen has been appointed assistant director in charge (ADIC) of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. Between April 2020 and October 2021, Jensen was chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, which meant he oversaw operations against Americans who attended the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. The FBI’s DC office pressured banks to inform on their J6 customers, organized violent raids of their homes, and coordinated with the US Attorney’s Office to intimidate J6 defendants into pleading guilty. The Transportation Security Administration’s Quiet Skies program, which targeted J6 defendants as domestic terrorists and subjected them to harassment and surveillance, would also have been coordinated with Jensen’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Section.
According to congressional testimony from former FBI National Security Intelligence Supervisor George Hill, Jensen referred to J6 defendants as “terrorists” on a conference call in 2021, saying: “I don't give a blank, they're goddamn terrorists, and we're gonna round them all up.”
However, J6 defendants were not the only ordinary Americans who appeared in Jensen’s crosshairs. The FBI official also targeted parents at school board meetings. According to internal emails provided by DOJ whistleblowers, Jensen and his counterterrorism unit investigated numerous parents as domestic terrorists after school board members complained about them. In one instance, the FBI interrogated a father who opposed school mask mandates. The father was reported for being an “insurrectionist” who “rails against the government,” though the informant later admitted that the father had not committed any actual crimes. In another case, the FBI investigated a mother who warned school board members that they would be replaced over their forced masking of children and said, “We’re coming for you.” The mother was reported to the FBI for being part of a “right wing mom’s group” called Moms for Liberty and being a gun owner.
Outrage
Jensen’s recent promotion, which is confirmed by the FBI’s website, has infuriated many supporters of the Trump administration who expected the FBI’s Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino weed agents like Jensen out of the powerful domestic security apparatus. Both men have decried the weaponization of the FBI against J6 defendants and have promised to reform the bureau dramatically.
“Dan Bongino and Kash Patel betrayed us all,” posted Philip Anderson, a former J6 political prisoner. “They promoted Steven Jensen who viciously persecuted J6ers. It has never been more clear that [Attorney General] Pam Bondi, Dan, and Kash have no intention whatsoever of arresting the democrat criminals.”
Another J6 prisoner, Derrick Evans, wrote: “Seriously Kash? Why the f**k does this guy have a job, let alone a promotion?”
George Hill, the former FBI official who testified to Congress on Jensen’s remark about J6 defendants, said the promotion is “a giant middle finger to Americans.”
“Jensen led the twice-daily nation wide conference calls where he breathlessly exclaimed the country was under attack by J6ers,” Hill wrote on X. “He was central to the ‘our democracy is under attack’ narrative.”
Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Oversight Project, announced his team will be referring the matter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
“[T]omorrow our team at @ItsYourGov will be sending a referral to @Jim_Jordan and @Weaponization about Steve Jensen and his history of being a J6 warlord. [I]'d like to be wrong on this but we have enough evidence to send it along. hopefully it makes sense soon.”
The Hodgetwins influencers said: “We voted for the FBI to be shut down and corrupt agents sent to prison. But instead they are promoting people like Steve Jensen who put parents on watch lists and hunted J6ers. Unacceptable!!”
Bongino: ‘Not every result is going to please everyone’
Despite Director Patel’s promises of transparency, the FBI has remained mum on the issue. Deputy Director Bongino appeared to address the move in a tweet, though he did not reference it directly.
On Sunday, Bongino wrote: “As I dive back into work, I want to reassure you that nothing that is happening here is happening by accident. Because of the sensitivity of what the FBI deals with, both the Director and I have to be circumspect in what we can make public. Bad guys read this stuff too. Neither one of us came here to play games. Measure us by results. You will see them. But just because you don’t see something happening right this second, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
“I’ll conclude by stating that not every result is going to please everyone. That’s just pandering, it’s not leadership. Complex problems require diligence and a reform-oriented process to create lasting changes. Or else you’re simply putting a bandage on a gushing wound. Let’s do it right.”
“All I ask is that you consider the following . . .” Bongino wrote in a follow up post later that day. “When you see something happen, and the entire story isn’t public, and the underlying facts aren’t all public, it may appear counterintuitive to our reform agenda. I promise you, it’s not an accident.”
President Trump issued pardons to the roughly 1,500 Americans who had been persecuted by the Biden administration for being inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The proclamation called the prosecutions “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.”
Last week, Washington, DC’s Acting US Attorney Ed Martin compared the J6 political persecutions to the Japanese internment camps during World War II. In January, Martin launched an investigation into the office’s targeting of J6 defendants under his predecessor, Matthew Graves, though no action appears to have been taken against Graves or his former team.
