Just eight days before the 2024 election, a lawyer claiming to represent an anonymous FBI whistleblower sent a politically explosive letter to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee alleging former FBI Director James Comey first began investigating Donald Trump shortly after he announced his run for president in June 2015, and did so without foundation.
More shocking, the letter claimed Comey “inserted” female undercover agents into Trump’s campaign to travel with him and his staff and fish for possible evidence of criminal activity as part of a so-called “honeypot” sting operation. The letter further claims the probe was never entered in the bureau’s case management system as required by Justice Department rules.
At first blush, these bombshell allegations of abuses of power at the highest level of the FBI sound plausible given the FISA surveillance violations and other serious misconduct that DOJ’s inspector general found the FBI committed during Comey's so-called Russiagate probe of Trump in 2016.
But they are based on a two-page letter — published here for the first time — that contains substantial errors. RealClearInvestigations has found that the letter was written by a Connecticut attorney with a reputation for sensationalizing complaints against the FBI. The lawyer, Kurt Siuzdak, is himself a disgruntled former FBI agent who sued the agency when Comey was running it.
Siuzdak’s Oct. 28, 2024, letter is not so much a “whistleblower disclosure,” as described, but his own summation of allegations leveled by an “FBI employee” whom he does not name in the letter. Nevertheless, the letter has received broad attention during the last few weeks, including news stories and social media posts alleging FBI abuse and a cryptic tweet from FBI Director Kash Patel that seemed to throw cold water on its claims.
There are several puzzling aspects to the allegations. For starters, the letter claims that after two undercover honeypot agents “infiltrated" the Trump campaign in 2015, “one of the individuals [they] targeted was George Papadopoulus[sic].” Only Papadopoulos didn’t join the Trump campaign until March 2016.
In an interview with RealClearInvestigations, Papadopoulos noted the timeline problem: “I was a senior foreign policy adviser on the Ben Carson campaign in 2015.”
There is at least a kernel of truth to the new rumors. Papadopoulos said he was approached by a flirtatious woman with “dirty blonde" hair and a “very heavy accent” who said she was an assistant to an academic who had hired him for a project in London. The woman, who said her name was “Azra Turk,” was sent to gather intel – though it’s still unclear whether she worked for the British government or the U.S. government, or was ever an FBI agent. The academic she claimed to work for, Stefan Halper, was a longtime bureau asset. But this approach took place in September 2016 and was part of an official counterintelligence inquiry, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, looking into suspected Trump campaign links to Russia.
Siuzdak’s letter claims that former FBI official Calvin Shivers was “involved in executing the plan” with Comey in mid-2015. This seems unlikely. At the time, Shivers headed the bureau’s child pornography and sex trafficking investigations. Siuzdak further states: "The investigation was closed because the New York Times obtained a photograph of one of the undercovers and was about to publish it. The FBI Press Office told the New York Times that the photograph was a picture of an FBI informant who would be killed if the photograph was revealed. In fact, it was a photograph of the FBI UCE [undercover employee].”
A New York Times spokeswoman denied this accusation. “That quote from the whistleblower complaint is inaccurate,” said Danielle Rhoades-Ha, senior vice president for external communications for the Times. “We never had a photo.”
While the letter appears to confirm suspicions held by President Trump and his team that Comey targeted him long before the FBI formally opened its Crossfire investigation in July 2016, even his new FBI director pushed back on the revelations, which went viral after the Washington Times first reported them (without mentioning the letter or its author).
In a Feb. 28 statement, Patel disputed the story and defended a female New York agent rumored by Siuzdak to be involved: “[S]he was NOT a honeypot.” He added that Special Counsel John Durham had already reviewed the matter as part of his probe of the FBI’s Russiagate investigation and “found no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
Contacted by RCI, Siuzdak appeared to back off the allegations.
Asked for the identity of the “FBI employee” he repeatedly referenced in his letter as the main source of the allegations, Siuzdak demurred, claiming, “The information was actually from multiple FBI employees.”
Asked if any of his witnesses have testified in closed-door sessions to corroborate the claims in his letter, Siuzdak said they have not been asked by committee investigators to be interviewed. But he said they've been too discouraged by recent events to give any statements. “When the disclosure occurred, the whistleblowers were willing to talk to Congress,” he said. “I don’t know if Patel’s blanket denial or the recent arrest of an FBI whistleblower changed their opinion,” referring to the arrest Monday of Johnathan Buma, a former FBI agent who for years had criticized FBI leadership in internal complaints. Buma was charged with leaking confidential information to The New Yorker and Business Insider, among other illegal disclosures.
RCI has reported that whistleblowers complained about retaliation during the Biden administration.
In a statement to RCI, the House Judiciary Committee said it is still looking into the complaint, but would not say if staff lawyers have sought to speak to any of Siuzdak’s whistleblower agents or even if they have learned their names. “It is our policy to protect whistleblowers at all costs, therefore we would never name a whistleblower or disclose our interactions with a whistleblower without their express consent,” said Russell Dye, spokesman for House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan. "The committee is continuing to review these allegations and seriously examines all whistleblower disclosures.”
Beyond the letter, the House panel has received no other disclosures or supporting materials.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is also aware of the matter, but a spokeswoman for GOP chairman Charles Grassley said, “We have nothing to share publicly at this time.”
Neither the House nor Senate judiciary panels have released statements or press releases regarding the allegations in the letter. Papadopoulos said no one from either committee has contacted him about them.
This is not the first time Siuzdak, who claims to represent more than 20 FBI whistleblowers, has offered such “disclosures" to Congress. In fact, he has contributed to a flood of serious complaints about the bureau, fielded mostly by the House Judiciary Committee. In a 2022 complaint, for example, he claimed that the FBI was fabricating terrorism cases and forcing agents to sign false affidavits, among other things. In a September 2022 letter, Siuzdak even claimed FBI leadership threatened to “kill” FBI agents if they blew the whistle on such misconduct.
It turns out that the bulk of his “disclosures” were merely things he had heard from agents around the country, and were not corroborated by sworn affidavits or other supporting documents. FBI headquarters denied the allegations he brought.
Whistleblowers as well as their attorneys are under obligation to tell the truth before Congress. Witnesses who knowingly make false statements to congressional investigators could face a fine and/or five years in prison. Colleagues of Siuzdak say he is prone to exaggerate and has an ax to grind against his former employer.
“He’s doing this because he hates the FBI,” said a Washington attorney who specializes in whistleblower cases and who has worked with Siuzdak in the past. “You have to take a lot of what he says with a grain of salt."
“He would call with wild claims and conclusions, but when we asked him for the receipts, we would just get crickets. He would never send them on,” added the attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We had to unwind and untangle the real truths from what he was spinning.”
More alarming, the D.C. attorney said that in one case Siuzdak "claimed to represent an FBI whistleblower when in fact he didn’t." “The same agent later told us they had no formal agreement,” he said.
Another prominent Washington whistleblower lawyer also questioned his credibility.
State records show Siuzdak is an active member of the Connecticut bar, admitted in 1992, but was suspended briefly in 2021 for a minor administrative infraction.
On the letterhead he sent Congress, Siuzdak's email address includes a website for his law firm that is now defunct. The physical address he lists is his home residence. The website used to say he was one of the few lawyers in the country with “experience in the Department of Justice’s whistleblower court.” However, no such court exists.
He has listed a diverse range of practice areas, from “Family Matters & Divorce Law” to “Cybersecurity and Data Privacy” to “FBI Whistleblower litigation.”
In addition to his law practice, Siuzdak works for a temp agency for lawyers called Axiom Legal. State incorporation records show Siuzdak started a “general management counseling” business last month, also from his home. Moreover, he has taught a course at Quinnipiac University titled “Introduction to Ethical Hacking.”
Siuzdak, 59, has made hyperbolic statements about his professional background. In a promotion for a whistleblower’s handbook he's selling on Amazon, Siuzdak claims he’s been called “the most formidable attorney to ever work for the FBI.” In a 2023 podcast, he said, “I don’t mean to brag ... but Comey came to the New Haven office to apologize to [me].” He also claims he ranks among "the top 20” FBI veterans who have "effected change" at the bureau in its 117-year history.
Siuzdak spent 24 years at the bureau during which he suffered health issues while working primarily out of the New York and New Haven, Conn., field offices, where he had a checkered record of performance as a field agent, according to court documents. A military vet, he was hampered by enduring injuries to his knee and back that made it difficult to walk. He'd also been hospitalized for heart problems, and claimed to suffer from lung damage after visiting Ground Zero in New York after 9/11.
Around the time President Obama tapped Comey to take over the FBI in 2013, Siuzdak began filing a series of workplace discrimination complaints that the FBI and DOJ called “frivolous." In 2015, the same year Siuzdak maintains Comey went gunning for Trump, court records reveal Siuzdak filed his own whistleblower case against the FBI in which he claimed bureau leadership under Comey had mistreated him.
According to the court filings, Siuzdak became disgruntled after he was passed over for dozens of requested assignments and promotions. The bureau cited “marginal” grades for core competency and other issues that impeded his ability to become a high-level supervisor, including that "he was often difficult to get in touch with, his voicemail was frequently full, and he had a reputation with other law enforcement agencies as being non-responsive,” according to the case files.
Siuzdak disputed the sub-standard performance reviews. After filing an EEOC complaint, he alleged that bureau management under Director Comey “retaliated" against him by denying him a position for which he had been recommended. He complained he was also improperly investigated for misuse of government credit cards and vehicles. At one point, he was even locked out of his office. He then sued the Justice Department in late 2014.
The next year, he was cited for additional “deficiencies." In Sentinel, the FBI's computer case management system, "there was no substantive activity in a full investigation assigned to SA [Special Agent] Siuzdak for over five months,” Siuzdak’s supervisor in the New Haven office noted. In 2015, in turn, Siuzdak filed a whistleblower complaint with the DOJ's inspector general alleging that his superiors were committing “time and attendance fraud.”
In 2018, Siuzdak settled his lawsuit with the FBI and DOJ for undisclosed terms. The agencies did not admit wrongdoing. DOJ attorneys argued in court that Siuzdak had a history of filing “frivolous” EEOC complaints alleging age, gender and physical disability discrimination dating back to 2012. But in court documents, Siuzdak maintained that Comey had paid a visit to the New Haven office in 2013 to specifically apologize for “the failure of the FBI’s executive management to correct the leadership failures" in Connecticut.
One of the senior FBI executives singled out repeatedly for rebuke by Siuzdak in his “whistleblower disclosures” is Paul Abbate, who retired in January as deputy director. Records show that Siuzdak and Abbate came up together in the bureau as rookies and were both assigned to the New York office. But their career paths quickly diverged. Abbate was fast-tracked, earning promotion after promotion, while Siuzdak was shuffled around, which embittered Siuzdak, bureau sources say.
“Paul Abbate has been a personal pin cushion for me,” Siuzdak revealed in a 2023 podcast.
In early 2021, Siuzdak quit the bureau. He told the New York Post later that year he left because of bureau mismanagement; however, he told an FBI whistleblower podcaster last year he left because he fell ill from COVID and almost died.
Messages seeking comment about Siuzdak and his “whistleblower" letter were left with the FBI. RCI also reached out to Comey's lawyer, who did not immediately return emails requesting a response to the allegations against him.
In spite of the questions, Siuzdak’s October letter may be receiving attention because of evidence that Comey did bend the rules regarding Trump. He signed FISA warrants targeting Trump aide Carter Page based on false opposition research from Hillary Clinton, known as the Steele Dossier.
One day after meeting with President Obama and other top Democrats in the White House on Jan. 5, 2017, Comey briefed incoming President Trump about the dossier on Jan. 6. That meeting was used by CNN and other media outlets as the news hook to air the false and salacious claims. Comey later secretly took notes of his conversations with Trump from the White House, and then gave them to a law professor friend who shared them with the New York Times. The DOJ’s inspector general later took Comey to task for failing to safeguard sensitive information.
And of course, Comey signed off on the pre-election undercover operation against Papadopoulos involving a blonde female investigator. The whole thing appeared to be a political op to sabotage Trump’s candidacy and then his presidency. Comey’s long-held hatred of Trump made the latest allegations believable.
If true, Siuzdak's claims of an “off-the-books” investigation "personally ordered" by Comey a year earlier would certainly deepen the Russiagate scandal. Patel is reportedly looking into them as part of his promised reforms of an agency he said was “politicized" and “corrupted" by Comey and his successor Christopher Wray. But if the new director is in fact investigating these allegations, he’ll no doubt be looking at Siuzdak's “whistleblower” letter, along with his reputation, with a jaundiced eye.
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