An arrested FBI agent who had publicly alleged Trump ally Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by Russia and who had denied the FBI had mishandled its investigation of Hunter Biden is now represented by a law firm that defended Joe Biden’s son.

The agent, Jonathan Buma, who had handled confidential human sources (CHSs) for the bureau and whose home had been raided by the FBI back in 2023, was arrested at JFK Airport in New York City in March for the alleged illegal disclosure of confidential information. He is being prosecuted in California, where he was based as an FBI agent.

Buma, whose previous claims to Congress and the media alleged that he was involved with helping special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into debunked claims of Trump-Russia collusion and who has repeatedly taken aim at Giuliani while defending the bureau’s slow walking of the Hunter Biden investigation, is now being defended by a high-profile law firm that defended Joe Biden’s son and attacked the federal investigation into him, Just the News has learned.

Scott Horton, then a lawyer for Buma, framed the FBI’s investigation as “revenge” against Buma last year, with the New York Times saying the lawyer said the FBI wanted revenge against Buma because he had “suggested that the FBI’s handling of confidential sources was affected by political bias against the Bidens and in favor of Mr. Trump’s allies.” The outlet reported that Horton “said he had met with Hunter Biden’s lawyers to discuss how Mr. Buma’s story might be of assistance.”

Horton did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News made to him through LinkedIn. The Times also reported last year that another lawyer for Buma, Mark Geragos, is also representing him. Geragos did not respond to an emailed request for comment about Buma from Just the News.

Kyla Wells, a federal defender in New York who briefly defended Buma in March after he was arrested, told Just the News this week that “Mr. Buma is now represented by Alexandra Kazarian” — also of Geragos & Geragos law. Kazarian did not respond to an emailed request for comment about Buma from Just the News.

Arrested before fleeing the U.S.

Buma was about to board an international flight when he was arrested, court filings show. A criminal complaint from the Justice Department was issued last month charging Buma with violating federal laws surrounding the disclosure of confidential information.

Buma worked for the FBI for 15 years, including working on counterintelligence matters from 2013 until February 2022. He had been assigned to the Los Angeles field office since 2018. The court filings said Buma’s duties included “managing confidential human sources” until December 2022.

A spokesperson for the FBI field office in Los Angeles told Just the News that “since this is an ongoing prosecution, I wouldn’t be in a position to comment. I would recommend that you contact the United States Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, where the criminal complaint was filed.” A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles told Just the News that “we are the office prosecuting Mr. Buma. I received your inquiry to FBI’s press office in Los Angeles. We have no comment beyond what is in the complaint affidavit.”

For a number of years, Buma had made allegations that the FBI was mishandling a variety of sensitive investigations, claiming his efforts to scrutinize Giuliani, also a former New York City mayor, were blocked. Buma also argued the FBI did not slow-walk its investigations of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Bogus claims of "Russian disinformation"

Fifty-one former intelligence officials released an October 2020 letter attempting to discredit New York Post stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop, with the ex-spies baselessly arguing that the Russians were involved with the laptop. It was later revealed that former acting CIA Director Michael Morell wrote the laptop letter after being “prompted” by Biden campaign staffer and future Secretary of State Antony Blinken to do so, and that the debunked laptop letter was written to give Joe Biden a “talking point” in his debate with Trump ahead of the November 2020 election.

The IRS whistleblowers previously revealed that the FBI verified the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop by November 2019 – nearly a year before the laptop emerged and the infamous laptop letter was written.

“Buma printed approximately 130 files from the FBI’s internal network, several of which summarized information provided to the FBI by CHSs, [Confidential Human Sources], some of which was clearly marked with warnings that made clear that the information was to be protected,” the FBI affidavit against Buma said last month of his actions at a Los Angeles field office on October 27, 2023. 

“Buma also printed nine text-file documents which contained text that had been copied and pasted from reports which were marked in such a way that made clear that the information must be protected, and which summarized information provided to the FBI by CHSs. Buma also printed out screenshots of messages he exchanged with an FBI CHS via an encrypted messaging application. After printing those materials, Buma emailed FBI supervisors about his intent to go on leave without pay, then left the FBI office.”

The FBI special agent who wrote the criminal affidavit said that the 130 files taken by Buma included at least eight “sensitive information reports related to a foreign adversary” and at least eight reports “related to CHS information” from 2021 and 2022.

The New York Times reported in May 2024 that at least four of the informants with whom Buma had been working had been dropped by the FBI. Buma told both the House and Senate that he had used confidential human sources to go after Russian Ukrainian businessman Pavel Fuks, who Buma linked to Giuliani as evidence that Giuliani had been compromised by Russia. Fuks did not respond to a request for comment which Just the News made through lawyers who had represented him.

Fuks, the Russian-Ukrainian businessman who has since been barred from the U.S., has engaged in legal feuds with Yuri Vanetik, an American businessman with links to Republican Party officials. A profile on Vanetik by Forbes described him as a “Ukrainian-American lawyer.” 

Multiple sources told Just the News they believed that Vanetik had been a CHS for Buma. Vanetik did not respond to requests for comment from Just the News made through his personal website.

Giuliani has repeatedly denied being compromised by Russia, and has never been charged with any crime related to these allegations by Buma. The disgraced FBI agent also played a role in shutting down a Giuliani-linked documentary on Hunter Biden that failed to emerge in 2020.

Joe Cammarata, a lawyer for Giuliani, celebrated Buma’s arrest in a March 22 tweet last month.

“FBI agent who went after my client Rudy Giuliani has been arrested!” Giuliani's attorney said. “The vindication of Rudy continues.” The lawyer did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.

The FBI said in its affidavit against Buma that, in a book draft written by the arrested FBI agent, he described himself as “one of the nation’s top performing counterintelligence agents at catching and flipping Russian spies” and that he called himself “the most significant whistleblower in FBI history.”

Buma said in a purported statement on Change.org this week that “less than 24 hours after submitting my formal resignation, the FBI arrested me in the most shameful and retaliatory fashion.” He contended that he had properly reported the international flight to the FBI a month prior. Buma contended that “I was not a flight risk. I had business meetings scheduled in the UK, and upon return, I had confirmed appointments with U.S. media outlets—exercising my First Amendment rights as a private citizen.” Buma said that “the affidavit used to justify this arrest was riddled with provably false claims.”

Buma’s lawyer called Trump a “Literal Fascist”

Buma’s new lawyer Alexandra Kazarian is described as the “legal partner” of Mark Geragos and the “returning guest co-host” of Geragos’s podcast, Reasonable Doubt. Kazarian’s biography states that she is “currently of-counsel to G&G. She handles the criminal caseload alongside Mark Geragos and his team of seasoned trial attorneys, defending the constitutional rights of the accused in every type of case imaginable.”

Her LinkedIn page says she has been at the Geragos law firm since 2019 and that she has been a delegate for the California state Democratic Party since 2010. She called Trump a “Literal Fascist” in a November 2015 tweet. She tweeted in March 2016: “Calling it now: when Hills [Hillary] wins, Trump'll take credit/fly his fmst [feminist] flag so high ‘I'm a YUGE feminist! I created the first woman president!’”

Mark Geragos is a leader of the Geragos & Geragos law firm, where his biography touts defending Mike Tyson, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and “President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.” Geragos recently helped actor Jussie Smollett convince the Illinois Supreme Court to reverse a criminal conviction tied to his 2019 hate crime hoax, and, according to Page Six and TMZ, Geragos is also reportedly joining the defense team for Sean “Diddy” Combs.

A federal judge in California in July 2024 threatened to sanction Hunter Biden’s legal team for "misrepresenting the history” of the case and for making statements to the court which were “not true” — but Geragos insisted to the Associated Press at the time that the legal team had not lied.

Geragos accused then-special counsel David Weiss of “character assassination” during an August 2024 court hearing, the New York Post reported, with Geragos saying the special counsel was attempting to “slime him” and conduct a “salacious prosecution” against the president’s son.

Making excuses for Biden's guilty plea

Geragos said that Hunter Biden’s guilty plea in the tax case came only because Weiss had allegedly blocked some of the defenses the president’s son wanted to use.

“We were not allowed to talk about the death of his mother and his sister at a very young age, or the death of his brother, as contributing or being causal to the addiction,” Geragos told NewsNation. “Once you eliminate that, those traumas, then he had a very tough, tough decision to make: Do I go forward with this case, put my family through all of the salacious details of my addiction? … Or do I just plead open and hope that the judge realizes that was a dark, dark period in my life?”

After his “sweetheart plea deal” collapsed, Hunter Biden was convicted by a Delaware jury on gun charges in June, and then pled guilty to tax charges in California in September. President Biden did a U-turn, and despite his statements to the contrary, pardoned his son in December of 2024.

Geragos told the Associated Press in December 2024 that “it was clearly a politically-inspired prosecution” against Hunter Biden. Geragos called the pardon “a great way to unify the country and heal the country.”

Buma and Robert Mueller

Buma told the House Judiciary Committee in April 2023 that “I identified and recruited several confidential informants with high-level direct access to some of the most powerful Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, individuals in their co-opted transnational organized criminal networks through which they operate and several U.S. citizens, some of whom were at the center of focus of the Special Counsel investigation.”

He added that “by virtue of the deep access my informants had, I regularly de-conflicted and collaborated closely with designated members of the Special Counsel based in Washington D.C.” Buma said that “through my work as the primary case agent, recruiter, and handler of some of the most prolific and sensitive informants in the FBI, I  became one of the top Agents working Russia/Ukraine matters specifically related to foreign influence over our elected officials.”

“Some of the sources I was operating told me they had direct access to persons who were of interest to the Mueller investigation, and I requested to and did offer and assess the veracity of some of the information furnished by these sources for the Mueller investigation,” Buma told the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2023. “My reporting was initially independent. Individuals working with the Mueller investigation became aware of my reporting and contacted me on their own initiative. … I had become one of the principal agents engaged with Russia/Ukraine counterintelligence matters related to foreign influence operations targeting elected officials.”

FBI investigation was tainted by reliance on fake dossier

Despite a two-year investigation, Mueller “did not establish” any criminal Trump-Russia collusion. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found huge flaws with the FBI’s investigation, criticizing the “central and essential” role of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier in the FBI’s politicized FISA surveillance of former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Special Counsel John Durham’s report concluded that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” The special counsel noted that “the FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.”

In a case tied to the Mueller investigation but unrelated to collusion, Samuel Patten pleaded guilty in August 2018 to failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, circumventing laws banning foreigners from sending money to Trump’s presidential inauguration committee, and giving misleading testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He was sentenced in April 2019 to 36 months of probation and a $5,000 fine.

The New York Times published a report in January 2019 that seemed similar to the sort of information Buma claimed he had been providing the Muller team. The outlet claimed that Mueller was scrutinizing “at least a dozen Ukrainian political and business figures who made their way to Washington for the inauguration” of Trump in January 2017. The outlet said: “Evidence of the Ukrainians’ presence eventually prompted interest from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as he investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, and has spawned a number of related inquiries by federal prosecutors. The investigations are playing out against growing indications that some of the Ukrainians who came to Washington for the inaugural, or their allies, were promoting grand bargains, or ‘peace’ plans, that aligned with Russia’s interests, including by lifting sanctions.”

The 2019 article also spent multiple sentences on Pavel Fuks — whom Buma has linked to Giuliani and has said he personally targeted.

Buma targets Rudy as "compromised"

Buma’s statement to the Senate in 2023 detailed his purported “concerns that Giuliani may have been compromised by the RIS” – Russian intelligence. Buma told Business Insider that "Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by individuals suspected of being involved in Russian counterintelligence influence operations.”

David Corn, a leftwing Mother Jones reporter who was also involved in pushing debunked Steele dossier claims, published a September 2023 story citing Buma: “A New Rudy Scandal: FBI Agent Says Giuliani Was Co-opted by Russian Intelligence.” Giuliani has repeatedly denied this, and has never been charged with any crime alleging he was working with Russian intelligence.

The arguments pushed by Buma echoed many of the themes touted by Democrats in their efforts to impeach Donald Trump during his first term over his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

House Republicans on the Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs Committees argued in December 2019 that “President Trump’s concerns about Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board are valid. The Obama State Department noted concerns about Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma in 2015 and 2016.” 

FBI's concerted campaign to defend the Bidens

The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Subcommittee also released an October 2024 report condemning the FBI’s handling of Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

“Beginning in early 2020, the FBI embarked on a concerted campaign to preemptively debunk—or ‘prebunk’—allegations about the Biden family’s influence peddling. Federal agencies repeatedly warned social media platforms about a pre-election Russian influence operation relating to Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian company Burisma,” the GOP said. “In many of these meetings between federal agencies and Big Tech, the FBI raised the topic of potential ‘hack-and-leak’ operations amid conversations about ‘election security’ and potential foreign influence operations.”

The Republican report also stated: “Then, when The New York Post reported on Biden family influence-peddling the morning of October 14, 2020, Big Tech did exactly what it had been primed to do. The social media companies obediently treated the article as a potential Russian hack-and-leak operation and applied their content moderation policies to censor it, prevent it from spreading, and hide it from the American people.” Democratic-supporting media, such as The New York Times, refused for more than a year to publish facts showing the laptop was indeed genuine. 

FBI cuts off Buma’s confidential sources

Buma told the Senate in July 2023 that, in late 2019, the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force “recommended that I close down DYNAMO as an FBI CHS out of their concern he had been in contact with agents of disinformation. I knew that DYNAMO had been in contact with agents of information, because he frankly told me this and shared with me his conclusion that they were agents of disinformation who could not be trusted.” He called the recommendation “baseless” and said “I argued strongly against this.” Buma said he did not shut down “DYNAMO” as a source after this, and DYNAMO began targeting Giuliani and others.

Buma told the Senate that, in early 2022, the FBI task force “again pressed for discontinuance of reporting from DYNAMO” and “this time my management mandated this action.” Buma wrote he was told that the information shutting down “DYNAMO” came from “highly classified information from the National Security Agency” — but Buma still disagreed with the decision.

Buma argued to the Senate that “typical disinformation operations are based on partial truths, and the only way to determine the veracity of the allegations is to conduct an independent investigation to attempt corroboration.”

The New York Times reported in May 2024 that “the FBI cut ties to at least a handful of informants and issued warnings about dozens of others after an internal review prompted by concerns that they were linked to Russian disinformation.”

The outlet said the review occurred in 2020 and 2021 inside the bureau’s counterintelligence division, that it led to the “severing” of some CHSs, and that the FBI was “investigating Mr. Buma’s dealings with an informant he worked with after the bureau cut off those identified in the counterintelligence review.” The Times parroted the FBI's own disinformation campaign, adding that “the FBI had been aware of Russian disinformation efforts for years, and eventually became concerned that the campaign extended to its own informants” who were providing information on the Biden family and on Donald Trump.

Buma & Yuri Vanetik vs. Pavel Fuks

Buma told the House in April 2023 that “I produced multi-source reporting on a Ukrainian oligarch gangster who is a co-opted agent of the Russian Intelligence Service, Pavel Fuks” and that “I personally made sure Fuks’ U.S. Visa was revoked.”

Buma seemed to change his story slightly a few months later, telling the Senate in July 2023 that “I requested that the Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection officials perform a secondary screening of Fuks the next time he attempted to enter the United States, and I provided CBP the derogatory information I had collected pursuant to my ongoing investigation of Fuks.” He now said that his “intelligence reporting” led to an “independent decision by CBP to revoke Fuks’ U.S. B1/B2 visa after he attempted to enter the U.S. in Miami on December 19, 2017.”

A spokesperson for Fuks told Mother Jones in a September 2023 story on allegations by Buma that “Mr. Fuks has never cooperated with Russian intelligence.” Fuks was sanctioned by Russia in 2018 and then sanctioned by Ukraine in 2021.

Fuks filed a lawsuit against Vanetik in 2019 — a lawsuit which he won in 2022. The lawsuit — related to Vanetik allegedly swindling Fuks out of money he had paid to attend Trump’s January 2017 inauguration — again echoes themes that Buma has discussed.

The June 2019 lawsuit by Fuks contended that Vanetik “defrauded” Fuks “out of $200,000 by promising that he could obtain for Fuks a VIP package for the 2017 U.S. presidential inauguration that included prime seating, tickets to exclusive inaugural balls, and access to other special events. But there was no VIP package, no prime seating, no tickets to exclusive balls, and no access to special events. It was all a scam.”

“Unfortunately for Fuks, he got caught on Vanetik’s line,” the lawsuit by Fuks contended. “Fuks gave Vanetik every opportunity to return the money, but Vanetik refused, and instead warned Fuks that Vanetik’s friends and colleagues in Washington, DC would send authorities after him. Not long after, Fuks had his visa revoked and a five-year travel ban instituted against him.”

Vanetik denied Fuks’s allegations against him in October 2019. Fuks told the court in April 2021 that he was seeking “a full refund of his $200,000, the costs of his travel to the United States for the inauguration, and his attorney’s fees and expenses for having to bring this action.”

Vanetik loses in court

Vanetik argued in April 2021 that Fuks was a “notorious underworld figure who is currently hiding in Ukraine to avoid an arrest warrant issued by Russia.” His lawyers claimed that “Vanetik did not personally enter into any contracts with plaintiff [Fuks] regarding inaugural events” and that “Fuks was explicitly told that he would not be meeting with the newly elected president prior to arriving in the United States. However, when he was again informed of this after arriving, he flew into a rage.”

U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha ruled in favor of Fuks and against Vanetik in July 2022, ordering Vanetik to pay Fuks $309,863.02. The judge said Fuks was more credible than Vanetik.

The judge ruled that “the court finds Plaintiff’s [Fuks’s] testimony regarding the sequence of events more credible than Defendant’s [Vanetik’s] and supported by the WhatsApp messages…which the court finds authentic and controlling. As the WhatsApp messages make clear, the $200,000 payment was for two ‘VIP’ packages for the 2017 presidential inauguration, the findings of fact..largely adopt Plaintiff’s [Fuks’s] version of events.” An appeals court upheld the judgment against Vanetik and in favor of Fuks in January 2024.

The successful 2019 lawsuit by Fuks claimed Vanetik had told him in April 2017: “Get this straight: I do not owe you or Vitaly any money. In fact, you owe us for the meetings in Rome and subsequent work. My friends and colleagues in Wahington [sic], DC are taking your threats very seriously, and will likely cooperate with our authorities as things progress. This is our last direct communication. If you have anything else to say, direct it to Leonid Wolff [sic]. I understand you have a relationship with him, and he is happy to address whatever claims you purport to have.”

Lawyers for Fuks said that “Vanetik’s invocation of Leonid Wulf’s name was apparently intended to suggest Vanetik had connections with Russian and Ukrainian mobsters and contract killers so as to intimidate Fuks into backing down.”

The lawyers for Fuks added that “Vanetik and Fuks subsequently spoke on the phone, and Vanetik again threatened Fuks, telling Fuks that he could have his powerful friends in Washington, DC cancel his United States visa. Soon after this threat from Vanetik, Fuks’s visa was canceled and he received a five-year travel ban.”

Buma bragged that it was he who personally ensured Fuks was banned from the United States.

Vanetik in the past portrayed himself as a supporter of Giuliani’s — although this would change. Vanetik tweeted in September 2013 a picture of himself “with Rudy Giuliani” shaking hands with the former mayor. And he tweeted on Trump’s first inauguration day in January 2017 that “Giuliani to advise group promoting Trump's agenda” as he shared a Politico article link about Giuliani’s role with the Great America Alliance nonprofit.

But Vanetik also tweeted in June 2021 that “Ukraine sanctions two businessmen tied to Giuliani” as he shared an article from The Hill about Ukraine sanctioning Dmytro Firtash and Pavel Fuks, and he tweeted again that month that “Ukraine imposes sanctions on two business tycoons with ties to Rudy Giuliani” as he shared an article from the Organized Crime and Reporting Project on Ukraine’s sanctions against Firtash and Fuks.

Pavel Fuks, who was a wealthy business developer, had hired Giuliani in 2017 on a one-year contract to help bring investments to the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine. The relationship between Fuks and Giuliani would be condemned by Democrats and investigated by Mueller. The former NYC mayor repeatedly argued that his work had not been foreign lobbying that would have forced him to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. No criminal charges were ever filed against Giuliani related to this.

It was reported by the leftwing Mother Jones in a January 2019 article that Fuks “has drawn scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller” as the outlet pointed to the “business connection” that Fuks had with “one of the lead lawyers representing Donald Trump in the Russia investigation: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.” Giuliani told the outlet that Fuks “was [a] sponsor of a preliminary study that my firm did of security and emergency management in Kharkiv and some on advice on a planned Holocaust Memorial.”

Accuses Giuliani of being an unregistered foreign agent

Fuks told the New York Times in 2019 that “I would call him the lobbyist for Kharkiv and Ukraine — this is stated in the contract.” Giuliani disputed this characterization, telling the outlet that “that makes it sounds like I lobbied the U.S. government, which I never did.”

“The Dem phony attack on my conduct as a lawyer, is intended to intimidate me in defending an innocent client,” Giuliani tweeted in September 2019, arguing that then-Rep. and now-Sen. Adam Schiff “has been attempting to frame @realDonaldTrump for almost three years. He should be investigated for lying, enabling perjury, and trampling on constitutional rights.” Giuliani tweeted in October 2019 that “with all the Fake News let me make it clear that everything I did was to discover evidence to defend my client” — Trump — “against false charges" of collusion.

Damian Williams, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced in November 2022 that the DOJ would not be filing charges against Giuliani. “The Government writes to notify the Court that the grand jury investigation that led to the issuance of the above-referenced warrants has concluded, and that based on information currently available to the Government, criminal charges are not forthcoming,” Williams said in a court filing at the time. Giuliani spokesman Ted Goodman told Politico at the time that this was proof that “the mayor has been completely and totally vindicated.”

“Myself and Mayor Giuliani are pleased, but not surprised by the result,” Giuliani attorney Robert Costello also told the outlet. “The guy’s reputation has been trashed over this kind of stuff and he deserves this statement and he got it today.”

Judge calls the Vanetiks "artful puppeteers"

Through a group called Medowood [sic] Management, Vanetik registered as a foreign agent in a March 2018 filing, labeling himself a “senior adviser” on behalf of the “foreign principal” — a Ukrainian businessman named Valerii Babych. The filing said that Babych “is the principal of an investment and finance business, and a private oil exploration company. He is also exploring a potential candidacy for national office in Ukraine.”

Vanetik also sued Fuks in 2021, arguing through lawyers that “Vanetik is informed and believes that Defendant Fuks is a notorious criminal, specializing in transnational money laundering, fraudulent schemes, and extortion.” He alleged that “Fuks’ transnational criminal activities are being highlighted in the press” and shared articles from The Daily Beast, The New York Times, Mother Jones, and The Washington Post, many of which included critiques of Giuliani.

The lawsuit also includes multiple claims by Vanetik about Fuks and Giuliani. The case is ongoing.

Elliott Broidy, a businessman who supported Trump and pleaded guilty in 2020 to illegal foreign lobbying, also ended up suing Vanetik and winning a case against him. Broidy, through his Farmers & Merchant Trust Company, filed a lawsuit in 2013, suing Yuri and his father Tony Vanetik “for breach of written and oral contracts, and for fraud.” 

The court entered a judgment in favor of Broidy and against the Vanetiks in 2016. The Vanetiks sought a new trial, but the judge denied the motion, writing dismissively of the Vanetiks: “They were the artful puppeteers who masterminded the scam that relieved the plaintiff of $750,000.  That money was used to personally enrich these defendants and enable them to travel the world trolling for more big fish.  Not a spoonful of dirt was turned in any Russian oil field.”

A California appeals court wrote in 2019 that “Yuri approached his friend, Elliot Broidy, about investing in one of those companies” involved in “business of oil exploration in Russia.” Yuri and his father, Tony, entered into a deal with Broidy. The appeals court wrote that “Broidy agreed to invest $750,000, with the written agreement his investment would go only to efforts to start production on the oil wells.” The court wrote: “Broidy later learned that his investment had not been used in connection with the oil wells.  Rather, the money had been used to pay off Yuri’s and Tony’s preexisting debts. Broidy and Tony orally agreed that Tony would pay back the $750,000; Tony failed to do so.”

Vanetik also tweeted in May 2017 that “Trump Warning to Comey Prompts Questions on ‘Tapes’” as he shared a New York Times article. He tweeted in July 2017 that “Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr., defends herself” as he shared a Washington Post article. Veselnitskaya, a former Russian prosecutor, was working closely with Fusion GPS — the opposition research firm that hired disgraced British ex-spy Christopher Steele to create his baseless anti-Trump dossier — at the same time she went to the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016.

He had also tweeted in May 2014 that “Hunter Biden, @JoeBiden's son, joined to the #Ukraine's largest gas producer and said he'll work to help the economy” as he shared a Politico article on Hunter Biden joining the board of Burisma.

Vanetik, on his personal website, attacked then-Rep. Devin Nunes and Rep Jim Jordan in December 2019 during the Ukraine impeachment saga, saying they had “doubled down on conspiracy theories and mudslinging attacks.”

And Vanetik praised retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who “painted a very unflattering portrait of Trump’s possible intentions with regard to Ukraine. A decorated war hero, Vindman was able to remain calm and collected as Republican members of Congress repeatedly attempted to besmear his character and patriotism.” Vanetik wrote: “No matter how compelling the evidence, however, convincing Trump’s most diehard supporters in Congress and in the American public at large of the need for impeachment may just be a bridge too far.”

Despite these criticisms, Vanetik has continued to portray himself as a Trump supporter on Twitter, including a 2024 post sharing a picture of a smiling Trump with the caption “Drop a [heart] retweet & follow me if you stand with President Trump.”

Buma defends FBI on Hunter Biden

Buma claimed to the House in 2023 that “my very own informants were the first to provide the U.S. Government, directly through me, detailed supporting documentation concerning Hunter Biden's escapades in Ukraine with Burisma and how he used his position as the vice president's son to get a lucrative position.”

He argued in a September 2023 interview with Business Insider that the FBI had properly handled the Hunter Biden investigation, and suggested that efforts to go after Joe and Hunter Biden were part of a “disinformation campaign.” The now-arrested FBI agent said he told his co-handler fellow agent, “Why do they keep going back to the Bidens? What if this is the leading edge of a disinformation campaign to create a theme of derogatory information about the Bidens in anticipation that Biden will be Trump’s main political rival?”

Buma told the outlet that "the FBI made a diligent attempt to run the Biden material to the ground” and that “it wasn't slow-played.”

Buma argued to the Senate in 2023 that there were Russian influences behind efforts to investigate Hunter Biden, writing that “I suspected at the time that this could have been an attempt by the RIS” – Russian intelligence services – “to push derogatory information into the U.S. Intelligence Community that would give the opposing political party” – the Republicans – “which had been shown to be favored by the RIS, a narrative to attack the character of Joseph R. Biden, in the event Biden became the Democratic presidential nominee, which did in fact occur several months later.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in 2022 cited whistleblower disclosures revealing that FBI agents investigating Hunter Biden “opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.” Grassley said whistleblowers showed him that “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation.”

Investigators told to not ask about "the Big Guy"

IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler revealed how federal investigators had slow-walked the investigation into Hunter Biden. The whistleblowers revealed how their investigation into Biden’s dealings with CEFC China Energy – a since-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate – was blocked by higher-ups. Shapley testified that “after an electronic search warrant on Biden’s Apple iCloud led us to WhatsApp messages with several CEFC China Energy executives where he claimed to be sitting and discussing business with his father Joe Biden, we sought permission to follow up on the information in the messages” – but “prosecutors would not allow it.”

A federal prosecutor also instructed investigators to “don’t ask about the big guy” – in reference to Joe Biden. Investigators were also reportedly blocked from investigating Hunter Biden’s lucrative business dealings in Ukraine through Burisma under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Buma directly linked himself to efforts to block an ill-fated 2020 documentary on Hunter Biden that Giuliani had been involved with, but failed to actually produce a film. Buma had written to the Senate in 2023 that “Giuliani had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a group of political activists in California during the critical time leading up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election” and that his sources had been involved in scrutinizing this.

Failed film project

In September 2023, Buma shared a Business Insider article on his LinkedIn page, with the article specifically citing him: “The aborted Giuliani film project also forms part of a whistleblower disclosure from Johnathan Buma, an FBI special agent whose allegations were first reported by Insider. Buma's statement alleges that Giuliani raised money for an election-year Biden film from a group of California activists and that Giuliani was soliciting information on Biden” from alleged “‘Ukrainian and also likely Russian sources.”

Giuliani lawyer Robert Costello had told Mother Jones back in 2020 that “there are no foreign investors” for the documentary and that “there has been no money raised or solicited from any foreign citizens.” The Munger family, which had helped fund the failed documentary, filed a lawsuit in August 2023 against California businessman George Dickson and California entrepreneur Timothy Yale, who had been involved in the project. Giuliani was not sued.

Mother Jones reported in 2021 that “The FBI Is Investigating Giuliani’s Attempt to Make a Movie About the Bidens and Ukraine.” The FBI reportedly raided Dickson’s home in 2021. No related charges were filed. Robert Hawk, the CEO of the Munger Family Companies, did not respond to a request for comment Just the News made through LinkedIn.

The August 2023 lawsuit by the Munger family sought to recover $1 million allegedly “stolen from it in a fraudulent scheme to allegedly produce a documentary that would expose the family of Joe Biden for improper influence peddling,” arguing that “it eventually became clear that the money had been stolen and no documentary was produced.”

Dickson’s lawyers in September 2023 argued that “as to all allegations and each and every cause of action, Defendant is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Plaintiff was aware of the acts alleged in the Complaint for years, agreed to Defendant's conduct, ratified it, acquiesced in it, and did nothing.” His legal team also said that “as to each and every cause of action, neither party is responsible to the other for damages arising from acts alleged in the Complaint because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was an act of God, that made the performance of the agreement impossible.”

Yale similarly argued in October 2023 that “Plaintiff’s causes of action fail, in whole or in part, because the wrongs, acts, and/or omissions alleged by Plaintiff, were committed by, or were the result of the conduct of Plaintiff” and that “Plaintiff’s causes of action fail, in whole or in part, because the losses that Plaintiff allegedly suffered were not proximately caused by any act or omission of Defendants.”

The litigation is ongoing.

The case against Buma

The DOJ’s criminal affidavit against Buma contends that three days after Buma absconded with the confidential documents, he posted several messages online containing excerpts of a draft of a book he was writing about his FBI career, which contained information he had learned through his FBI job about FBI investigations into a foreign country’s WMD program.

The court filings also argue that, in the fall of 2023, “a U.S. media entity published an article containing confidential information related to reporting that was provided by a CHS to the FBI related to an associate of a foreign official and that Buma knew he had a duty to protect.”

The bureau raided Buma’s home on November 13, 2023. The criminal affidavit says that the FBI didn’t find any of the documents that Buma had taken from the bureau in October 2023 during that search, but that in December 2023 the bureau obtained a federal search warrant for his accounts and devices.

The criminal affidavit also says that Buma filed a complaint with the FBI’s Inspection Division in January 2022 claiming he had been retaliated against. Buma’s complaint was referred to the DOJ inspector general, who declined to pursue the matter.

The FBI included in its court filings an email which the bureau said Buma sent to a personal associate, with the email stating that Buma “took a halve [sic] a Loraz, two beers, a Cialis, and a Bystolic to get it down. It’s all [in] Anticipation of what I know k [sic] need to get and do while there for five or so hours today; which mu [sic] be my last with my beloved bureau, which gave me so many opportunities to shine previously :(”

Lorazepam is used to treat anxiety disorders, Cialis is used to treat erectile dysfunction, and Bystolic is used to treat high blood pressure, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The email was sent the day Buma allegedly improperly absconded with FBI records. The FBI said that three days later — on October 30, 2023 — Buma posted eight messages online containing excerpts of a draft of a book he was writing about his FBI career, with the messages allegedly containing information he had learned through his FBI job about FBI investigations into a foreign country’s WMD program.

The FBI also said in court filings that in December 2023, the bureau gained access to Buma’s email accounts, one of which “contained three photographs that appear to be printouts of an email thread between BUMA and an FBI intelligence analyst summarizing information provided to the FBI by a CHS who was handled by BUMA.” The metadata images indicated that the photographs were taken in May 2020 in the vicinity of Buma’s home in Rancho Santa Margarita, California.

After Buma’s arrest in New York, the case was moved to the Central District of California. Buma agreed to waive his right to an identity hearing and the production of the warrant on March 18, and he agreed to waive his right to a preliminary hearing in a court filing dated April 4.

Buma was released on a $100,000 bond according to a court document dated March 18, where he agreed to submit to pretrial supervision, agreed not to leave the areas of the Central District of California and Utah and the points in between needed for travel, and also agreed to “refrain from excessive use of alcohol” in a handwritten addendum.

Buma in his own words

“I’ve had a lot of haters target me lately based on information in the media that simply is not true, but I’ve had a lot of support for doing what I can to protect America, the truth, accountability for ALL people, integrity in the media AND the identities and lives of my former CHSs and friends who have stood with me from time to time,” Buma said in a statement under his name through Change.org this week. On LinkedIn, Buma had shared a number of articles featuring his claims, including in The New Yorker and multiple pieces by Business Insider, including an interview with the outlet.

Buma had emphasized in September 2023 that “I am NOT speaking with approval or on behalf of the FBI.” He said that he had “only been treated like garbage cast to the curb to rot.”

Buma responded to a September 2023 post by Eric Garland, known best for his December 2016 “it’s time for some game theory” Twitter thread pushing false claims of Russian collusion. Garland’s Substack post, lauding Buma, pushed baseless claims related to Russia, Israel, and Giuliani: “BUMA’s reward for his historic counterintelligence work was to be demoted and harassed relentlessly. He took on Rudy GIULIANI just before he launched another assault on this nation with the help of Russian and Israeli intelligence, and BUMA got systematic, undeserved, undocumented harassment that continues to this day.”

“I’m responding to below post because it went viral,” Buma said. “What was said by Eric Garland is all true, except that I’m no hero, nobody particularly exceptional. The only correction I want to add here to Garland …  is that I never made ANY statement about Israeli involvement in the Russian targeting of our political construct. We are all humans, a point we should all appreciate and I personally do – even having my own Jewish-heritage children.”

“Am I mad at the FBI?” Buma wrote on LinkedIn in October 2023. “You’re damn right I am and have good reason to be, akin to being mad at a brother who sucker punched me in the face.” Buma claimed that month that “I am NOT a political person and support the freedom of all parties to assemble for the purpose of intelligent discourse devoid of violence or base intimidation.”

Buma also responded favorably to a Business Insider story written just a few days after the Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. The article, written by a reporter who had previously written about Buma, was titled, “Hamas proudly committed war crimes. Is Israel's government about to do the same?”

“Way to tell the truth Matt,” Buma wrote. “The branding of human beings as ‘animals’ is remarkably and ironically similar to how the Jewish people in Germany were previously branded, thereby justifying their clandestine extermination by a government.”

Buma also appears to have created a number of Change.org petitions for himself, with one saying that he worried that the U.S. “will allow a corrupted ‘fifth column’ of managers to take control of our justice system.” Buma wrote in a November 2024 petition that “I remain un-resigned and not terminated, presumably because it wouldn’t look good to terminate the only legitimate whistleblower related to the Hunter/Giuliani fiasco and mishandling of my original intelligence reporting. Fingers crossed.”

Buma also claimed in October 2024 that he had “complex PTSD endured from three years of retaliation for just doing my job” and claimed in November 2024 that “the retaliation I have now endured for 3 years was designed to exploit my ADHD disability.”