Pro-Trump former FBI official says he's channeling agents' rage

A former top FBI official who has claimed insight into the bureau’s rank and file's outrage over the handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton confirmed Thursday that he has been in touch with active agents after denying it in an interview published earlier in the day.

Jim Kallstrom, who headed the FBI’s New York field office in the 1990s, has spent months citing anonymous sources within the bureau to warn that many there were upset by Director James Comey’s decision to recommend against charges for Clinton related to her use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Kallstrom, who has endorsed Donald Trump for president, has suggested in past interviews that he has spoken with active FBI agents, including some working on the Clinton investigation, which if true, would mean the agents broke bureau protocol to discuss a case.


“I know some of the agents,” Kallstrom said in a past interview with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who had asked him about the FBI’s investigation into Clinton. “I know some of the supervisors and I know the senior staff. And they’re P.O.’d, I mean, no question. This is like someone driving another nail in the coffin of the criminal justice system.”

But according to a Daily Beast article published Thursday, Kallstrom first denied speaking at all to any active FBI agents and said his assessment of the mood of the bureau’s rank and file was based exclusively on conversations with retired agents. But later in that same interview, he said that he did interact with active agents who had reached out to him.

Kallstrom stuck with that story Thursday night on Fox News’s “The Kelly File,” where he disputed the Daily Beast’s assessment that he had claimed to have spoken with active FBI agents investigating Clinton.

“Well, they can write what they want. I never did claim I talked to the actual agents. I would never do that. I would never call up people that were investigating something and even put them on the spot. I wouldn't do that,” Kallstrom said. “But I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of people in the FBI -- mostly retired people and some people that are currently on the job that are not directly involved, but, you know, it's a small organization. You know, they know what's going on.”

“And the agents are furious. And I haven't walked anything back,” he continued. “I didn't walk anything up that deserved to be walked back. So I don't know what they're talking about.”

Kallstrom, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, is the founder of the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which was the beneficiary of the fundraiser Trump held last January instead of attending a GOP primary debate in Iowa. According to the Daily Beast, Kallstrom’s foundation has received at least three major gifts from the Manhattan billionaire, two of which came during the campaign, totaling over $1.3 million.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who Kallstrom told the Daily Beast is "a very good friend" of his, has similarly claimed to have a pipeline of information coming from the FBI's rank and file, offering a similar assessment of its mood to the one Kallstrom has. A week ago, Giuliani teased "a couple of surprises" from the Trump campaign just days before Comey announced that the FBI is examining additional, potentially new evidence related to Clinton's email scandal. He declined to elaborate at the time what those surprises would be, but said they would be "enormously effective."

Jason Miller, the senior communications adviser to Trump's campaign, told the New York Times that Giuliani did not have advance notice of Comey's announcement.

“Rudy was just having fun,” Miller said. “To keep the other side on their toes.”