Longtime FBI agent charged with disclosing confidential information
A longtime FBI agent has been charged with unlawfully taking and disclosing protected FBI information, based on courtroom information reviewed by CBS Information.
Johnathan Buma, who specialised in nationwide safety and terror circumstances, has been launched on $100,000 bond, with orders to look in courtroom in Los Angeles.
Buma was arrested as he boarded a world flight at JFK airport in New York, based on charging paperwork. The Justice Division’s filings allege Buma printed of caches of FBI information from an inside company community. Almost 130 information may need been compromised, based on an FBI investigators. The federal government argues the information had been clearly marked as confidential or safe and had been copied by Buma within the hours earlier than he left his job within the bureau in October 2023.
The charging paperwork additionally allege that days after taking copies of the information, Buma used social media to put up excerpts of a e book he was writing about his profession with the bureau. Federal investigators allege the e book included data Buma obtained from the FBI about an investigation of a international nation’s weapons of mass destruction program.
Earlier than he left his job, Buma claimed to be a whistleblower and was publicly essential of the Trump administration in the course of the President Trump’s first time period. He had additionally testified earlier than a Senate committee in 2023 that his informants had been the primary to alert the federal government about potential misconduct by Hunter Biden enterprise dealings in Ukraine with an vitality firm. He mentioned they offered data “regarding Hunter Biden’s escapades in Ukraine with Burisma and the way he used his place because the vice chairman’s son to get a profitable place.”
Based on the charging paperwork, Buma can also be accused of saving screenshots of messages he exchanged with a confidential FBI supply.
In courtroom filings submitted in a U.S. District Courtroom in New York, investigators referenced Buma’s personal e book manuscript. In a single part, Buma refers to himself as “one of many nation’s prime performing counterintelligence brokers.”
There was no instant response from Buma’s legal professional to a request for remark. No plea has been entered in case but.
Buma was a ticketed passenger on an outbound worldwide flight on Monday from JFK airport, based on the Justice Division. He was taken into custody by FBI workers at 10 p.m. Monday, earlier than the flight departed.
He labored for the FBI, together with out of an Orange County, California, workplace of the FBI’s Los Angeles division throughout his 15-year profession. Buma targeted on counterintelligence and counterproliferation issues.
Editor’s notice: An earlier model of this report mentioned that Johnathan Buma was charged with disclosing labeled information, however the information had been confidential. The article has been up to date.
