By Eireann Van Natta, Daily Caller News Foundation | April 22, 2025
A former FBI analyst who resigned over FBI Director Kash Patel and President Donald Trump announced he was running for Congress on Tuesday. John Sullivan is challenging New York Republican Rep. Michael Lawler for New York’s 17th Congressional District.
“For 17 years, I served in secret, protecting us from threats like Russia, foreign terrorists and drug cartels, and eventually the insurrectionists who stormed our Capitol,” Sullivan wrote online. “Now, I’m stepping out of the shadows to run for Congress.”
“I’m a dad, a husband, a public servant and a cancer survivor,” he added in his campaign video.
He also labeled Rep. Lawler “Elon Musk’s favorite congressman.”
Sullivan said he resigned from the bureau over the Trump administration in April. He blasted Trump and Patel as threats to “American safety and security.”
“Last week, after nearly 17 years on the job, I resigned from the FBI,” he posted on X. “I saw the threat Donald Trump and Kash Patel are to American safety and security and I couldn’t stand idly by any more.”
He linked to his full resignation letter on Substack, which lamented Trump’s pardons of around 1,500 individuals connected to January 6. He alleged that those pardoned were “violent insurrectionists.”
“I’ve listened as employees recounted harrowing moments when violent insurrectionists, within hours of release, called their homes and threatened revenge,” he wrote. “These threats are real because Trump released 1,500 violent insurrectionists into our communities.”
Sullivan also tweeted that working on January 6 cases was “one of [his] proudest moments in the FBI.”
Over two dozen FBI confidential human sources (CHSs) were in Washington, D.C. in connection to events that took place on Jan. 6, 2021.
Sullivan also claimed Patel seeks to make the FBI “Trump’s personal detective agency, investigating and harassing people that Trump and Elon disagree with.”
The FBI complied with Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) in February and handed over the names of employees involved in January 6 cases.
During the Biden administration, the FBI reportedly raided the homes of pro-life protesters and January 6 defendants. The bureau also surveilled school board parents, according to whistleblower Stephen Friend, and allegedly punished whistleblowers.
Sullivan worked in the Washington, D.C. and New York FBI field offices, according to his Substack.
The former agent said he eventually served as the Section Chief of the Intelligence Workforce Development Section in the Directorate of Intelligence.
Eireann Van Natta is an intelligence state reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation
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