By Eireann Van Natta, Daily Caller News Foundation | March 31, 2025
A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who was forced out for refusing to sign off on a warrant into a right-wing “domestic extremist group” has won a fight to unseal documents related to that case.
Zach Schoffstall, a former supervisory agent in the FBI’s Salt Lake City division, was forced out of the FBI during the Biden administration for not going after the Patriot Front organization, the Daily Caller previously reported.
Empower Oversight, a group that represents whistleblowers, filed a motion to request the government unseal the warrant. After 90 days, the government finally acquiesced and released the document, Schoffstall said. The only information redacted was the name of the supervisory agent.
Thirty-one members of the group Patriot Front were arrested after protesting an LGBT event in Idaho and charged with conspiracy to riot in 2022.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) in Idaho and the FBI pressured Schoffstall to sign off on the warrant, but he refused. The government attempted to find agents who would comply, including one without knowledge of the investigation, he previously told the Caller.
Schoffstall pushed back, and it cost him his career.
“It is my opinion based on the facts known to me that the FBI, DOJ, and Idaho US Attorney’s Office sought to conceal this search warrant from me because it would be factual evidence in support of my whistleblower complaints to Congress and my administrative complaints against the government,” Schoffstall told the Caller in March.
The warrant requested to search the electronic devices of Patriot Front members.
The affidavit supporting probable cause, obtained by the Caller, created tenuous connections between the protesters and riots in Charlottesville and at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
It attempted to tie Patriot Front to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The riots resulted in one counter-protester being killed and multiple people suffering injuries.
The FBI documents claim that the now-disbanded Vanguard America eventually became Patriot Front, which was not created until after the rally. James Fields, who drove his car into counter-protesters in Charlottesville, was carrying a shield with Vanguard America’s logo during the protest. Vanguard America denied he was a member.
The George Washington University Program on Extremism notes that Vanguard America “splintered” after Charlottesville, with member Thomas Rousseau, who led the group’s march in Charlottesville, creating his own organization, Patriot Front.
The affidavit also pointed to training videos on Patriot Front’s website as evidence the group was potentially preparing for violent conflict, deeming them “military-type drills.”
The documents also brought up the events of Jan. 6, 2021. The affidavit pointed out that the Patriot Front protesters carried shields at the LGBT protest and that shields were also used as weapons by rioters at the Capitol.
In Schoffstall’s declaration, he pointed to an email sent from the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division (CTD) concerning Rosseau.
The email said that an FBI investigation found Rousseau stated he did not want to “participate in violence” and reprimanded members who did, even kicking them out of the organization.
FBI CTD communications led Schoffstall to believe the bureau was aware of Patriot Front’s “distasteful but constitutionally protected protest activity, and the efforts by its leadership to prevent and avoid acts of violence by its members,” his declaration noted.
A summary for FBI Executive Management stated Patriot Front was formed for lawful, First Amendment activity.
“The group subscribes to Racially Motivated Violent Extremism ideology but is not formed for an unlawful purpose,” a June 16, 2022 summary sent to Schoffstall read.
Schoffstall, however, was inevitably pushed out of the bureau for refusing to go after the group.
“I also believe that the FBI, DOJ, and US Attorney’s office knew what they did was wrong and they had misled the court with their affidavit,” he told the Caller. “I believe they sought to keep this affidavit from the state criminal case discovery process to both deny me an attempt to secure a copy and to prevent legal and public scrutiny of their affidavit. ”
The Patriot Front case the government so aggressively pursued didn’t amount to much — Rousseau’s case never went to trial and other members received soft sentences.
Some spent a few days in jail for conspiracy to riot and were fined $1000, while twenty other members took plea deals and were let off without a fine, East Idaho News reported.
The Biden administration prioritized targeting “domestic extremism” and launched the first ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism in 2021.While Schoffstall does not sympathize with the politics of Patriot Front, he believes the warrant was an issue of protecting Americans’ constitutional rights. The FBI was aware of exculpatory evidence that was not included in the affidavit and eventually submitted to a Federal Magistrate, his declaration asserted.
The Trump administration, including officials like FBI Director Kash Patel, zeroed in on government weaponization day one, and Schoffstall told the Caller how the bureau can be depoliticized.
“I believe the DOJ should make good on its promise to set up a weaponization task force to investigate allegations of abuse by members of the DOJ, US Attorney’s Offices, the FBI and other organizations within the DOJ’s purview,” he said.
On Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first day in office, she established a Weaponization Working Group to investigate various cases of weaponization during the Biden administration.
The group will examine the FBI memo targeting Catholics and prosecutions of pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, according to the memo.
FBI Director Kash Patel vowed to tackle weaponization of the FBI, and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard pledged to end politicization in the intelligence community.
“I believe the FBI and DOJ should reinstate myself and others who have been wrongfully retaliated against, terminated, and/or suspended for reporting or resisting misconduct in those agencies,” Schoffstall said.
FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle was indefinitely suspended without pay after the bureau accused him of leaking information to the media, he previously told the Caller. However, O’Boyle said he only made protected disclosures to Congress about the politicization he witnessed in the agency.
Schoffstall believes that whistleblowers like him should be given the opportunity to advise the government on weaponization and whistleblower protection.
“Further, I believe individuals such as myself should be given position and opportunity to advise the new administration and Congress on how weaponization occurs, how the system is used as the punishment, how these agencies can be improved and how whistleblowers can be protected,” he told the Caller.
Eireann Van Natta is an intelligence state reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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