Senate Republicans are poised to help pass a massive spending bill that includes billions of dollars more for the FBI.
This is despite a recent whistleblower disclosure, reported exclusively by The Washington Times, that bureau management in Washington pressured its agents around the country to hide the number of hours they spent on the Jan. 6 investigation and inflate time spent on other cases.
According to the anonymous whistleblower, the scheme’s purpose was to boost the FBI’s budget requests to Congress and the year-end spending bill shows the bureau is getting over and above what it received in fiscal year 2022.
The spending package appropriated $11.33 billion for the FBI to investigate “extremist violence and domestic terrorism.” That’s $569.6 million above the levels appropriated for the 2022 fiscal year and $524 million more than President Biden requested in his budget.
Additionally, the U.S. attorneys’ offices received $2.63 billion, which is an increase of $212.1 million above fiscal year 2022 to further support prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and domestic terrorism cases.
Rep. Dan Bishop, North Carolina Republican, called these provisions among the most “egregious” in the $1.7 trillion 4,000-page spending bill.
The FBI is also getting a new, $375 million headquarters with lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland competing for their state to be the bureau’s new home.
The bill appropriated the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms...
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