Grassley Defends Whistleblowers from Left-Leaning Media Smears

Floor Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
"The New York Times Shows Its Anti-Whistleblower Bias"
Thursday, February 5, 2026

VIDEO

Mr. President,

Today, I come to the floor to again speak about the New York Times' anti-whistleblower reporting.

In a January 18, 2026, article, Glenn Thrush, Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman gave another big wet kiss to their fired friends from the Biden DOJ and FBI.

And they did so in an effort to intimidate, smear and discredit brave and patriotic whistleblowers.

This has now become a pattern of conduct by the New York Times, dating back to articles starting in 2023.

On May 18, 2023, Adam Goldman wrote an article designed to undermine my exposure of former FBI agent Thibault's political conduct.

Goldman wrote his article before knowing all the facts. For one, Thibault was found to have violated the Hatch Act for anti-Trump political conduct at work. Second, Goldman's article didn't account for emails I released last year showing Thibault violated the FBI's rules in opening and advancing Arctic Frost.

Accordingly, Arctic Frost was defective from the start.

Goldman's article hasn't aged well.

On January 30, 2025, Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman mischaracterized my and Senator Johnson's Arctic Frost disclosures by saying "messages showed that FBI investigators took normal bureaucratic steps and precautions" when opening the case.

Was this supposed to be an opinion piece on behalf of terminated FBI agents or a real news article?

Normal steps weren't taken.

As I noted in my February 3, 2025, floor speech about Thibault:

Does the New York Times truly believe that it's normal for an Assistant Special Agent in Charge to prepare case predication for the opening of an investigation and then feed it to a street agent?

Is it normal for an Assistant Special Agent in Charge responsible for the most sensitive political investigations in the FBI to be forced to resign for partisanship on the job and then be found to have violated the Hatch Act for that same partisanship?

These two New York Times articles are merely examples out of others that could be addressed with the same rebuttals.

So, in the interest of time, I'll only address the January 18, 2026, article I started this speech discussing.

In that article, Thrush, Feuer and Goldman issue the same slobbering defense of fired FBI agents whose emails Senator Johnson and I've made public.

So, who does the Times attack?

They've chosen me and my whistleblowers.

First, Thrush, Feuer and Goldman get something right.

They said the FBI is producing records "in response to longstanding inquiries by Republicans on Capitol Hill."

The House and Senate have finally begun to receive responsive productions to our oversight requests. Some of those requests date back many years. Indeed, some requests date back to the first Trump administration.

This isn't the scandal the Times would like to create. The Justice Department and FBI have an obligation to respond to congressional inquiries.

To Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel's credit, they've done better in that regard than any of their predecessors.

Am I fully satisfied? Of course not. But Bondi and Patel deserve credit, and if the Biden administration had done the same, I'd give them credit, too.

By and large, the records I've made public this and last Congress are directly from whistleblowers in unredacted form, to which my office applies limited redactions. Or, the records are from the government in response to whistleblower disclosures that I've shared.

There's been examples this Congress and last where the government had no idea what records it possessed until I transmitted whistleblower disclosures to them.

The most recent being the email about an FBI agent wanting to criminally investigate Elon Musk.

This, too, isn't a scandal that the Times would like to imply.

That's called good government oversight, and I've done it all my career.

Second, the Times said I called the raid on Mar-a-Lago - where the FBI reportedly searched the rooms of the First Lady and Barron Trump - a miscarriage of justice.

The Times didn't include the full tweet.

They left out the beginning of the sentence where I said, "Based on the records."

Those records showed that FBI agents had many concerns about the raid and "will not do" the search warrant unless the Deputy Director provided direction.

These are records that were covered up by the Biden administration.

Indeed, the public ought to know and give credit to those FBI agents for expressing their concerns and doing it in writing.

I gave the same credit to FBI agents who were obstructed by their leadership and then-Secretary of State John Kerry during the Obama administration.

For example, I released a majority staff report last year. That report made public FBI emails that showed agents tried to arrest high-level Iranians but were stopped.

Those agents were stopped from doing their job because of political considerations relating to the Iran Nuclear Deal.

And lastly, I released records this year showing FBI agents wanted to investigate election matters but were obstructed.

Those agents created an investigative document that was suppressed in part because the information would contradict Wray's testimony.

The records show real frustration among the FBI's rank and file.

Again, I made this information public to inform the American people, and also give due credit to those agents standing up for their work.

Now, relating back to the Times article, the third issue to raise is Thrush, Feuer and Goldman do something unforgivable.

Their article essentially accuses my whistleblowers of violating the law.

And it does so in part by citing to a complaint filed by J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston, two of Jack Smith's partisan prosecutors.

Cooney and Gaston reportedly accused the whistleblower disclosures of violating grand jury secrecy laws when I obtained 197 of Jack Smith's subpoenas.

Senator Johnson and I then made them public - almost 2,000 pages of information. And that information exposed that Smith and his team targeted over 400 Republican individuals and organizations. In some cases, Smith and his team sought communications with the media and legislative branch.

Cooney and Gaston were a part of Jack Smith's team.

So, that reported complaint they filed against my whistleblowers is littered with conflicts of interest.

But let's focus on this: Smith and his team sought communications with the media.

Instead of the New York Times investigating and reporting on that major constitutional red flag, the Times brushes it aside and gladly runs with the false accusation from Cooney and Gaston against my whistleblowers.

And in doing so, the Times also linked a 2020 Justice Department opinion memo to the article to try and support Cooney and Gaston's whistleblower chilling efforts.

But the DOJ opinion was scoped to "leaks to the press [of] confidential information concerning prosecutorial decision-making."

The whistleblower disclosures were to Congress, not the media.

The same DOJ opinion also says in footnote number two that a separate statutory provision exists that "protects disclosures to Congress using significantly different language and raises distinct issues that we don't discuss in this opinion."

The same DOJ opinion also says, in part, that an employee is provided whistleblower protections "when the employee reasonably believes that the disclosure reveals a violation of laws or rules, or exposes serious wrongdoing as defined by statute."

Thrush, Feuer and Goldman's opinion piece fails three ways. And they misled the public by creating a false narrative that whistleblower disclosures provided to me and Senator Johnson were somehow illegal.

Moreover, a fundamental precept of whistleblowing is the First Amendment.

I thought the New York Times and its left-leaning compatriots loved that amendment.

Here, in this January 18 article, the Times shreds the First Amendment and, in doing so, undermines and devalues patriotic whistleblowers.

That's a historic disgrace that'll age very poorly for these authors, their editors and the Times at large.

The January 18 article also argues that my critics say these whistleblowers won't face reprisal because Trump is in office.

Reprisal isn't a condition precedent to being a whistleblower.

And how dare the Times make any insinuation that my whistleblowers haven't put themselves at risk.

Whether there's a Republican or a Democrat running the White House, whistleblowers always face risks.

And mine have faced years of risks because their disclosures to me have occurred over a period of years, not just during Trump.

Here, too, the Times and the authors try very hard to undercut the assertion that my whistleblowers are protected by law.

It's an act done to chill, intimidate and smear patriotic government workers.

In closing, perhaps the most disappointing element of this article is the quote from the Government Accountability Project (GAP). GAP's a group I've worked with for decades on legislation and whistleblowers. And I consider them a very fine organization - not only helping whistleblowers, but helping all of Congress in our responsibility of oversight, to see that the executive branch faithfully executes the laws according to the constitutional requirement.

GAP said this to the Times about my whistleblowers not facing any risk of reprisal: "There's no risk, given that it looks like the entities who ordinarily might retaliate apparently might be behind the release."

This is a shameful statement to make. So, my office approached GAP, and this is what they told us.

First, GAP apologized. They said about the New York Times article, "It's not something GAP wanted to have our organization part of."

Second, GAP said the quoted employee "is a contract lawyer who wasn't authorized to speak for the organization beyond his clients."

GAP asked the Times to make that correction but "unfortunately they declined."

Third, GAP said it didn't stand behind the statement as it "violated GAP's standards, because it was speculative rather than evidence based."

Fourth, GAP said the quoted employee "didn't know the context when a reporter asked him a hypothetical question, and has promised to check before any futurepublic statements that could overlap with Judiciary Committee work."

So it appears that, based on GAP's representations to my office, the New York Times misled the GAP employee to get a quote that would fit the Times' pre-determined narrative.

So much for following the facts and the evidence.

GAP also submitted a Letter to the Editor in support of this senator. I thank them for that.

What shoddy work by Thrush, Feuer and Goldman.

Thanks to them, the New York Times is the paper of record when it comes to attacking and undermining whistleblowers.

To my whistleblowers:

I'll defend you.

I'll protect you.

And I'll continue to make public the records you've given me.

To the New York Times, "shame" isn't a strong enough word to describe these unprofessional articles.

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