FBI agent who criticised Trump charged with sharing confidential documents

An FBI agent who accused the bureau of political bias during Donald Trump’s first presidential term was arrested this week at a New York airport and charged with illegally disclosing confidential documents, court filings show.

Johnathan Buma, a 15-year FBI veteran and counterintelligence specialist, is accused of printing roughly 130 files from internal FBI networks in 2023 and sharing them with associates as part of a book he was writing about his career, according to a court filing.

Buma was arraigned in Brooklyn federal court on Tuesday and released on a $100,000 bond, the court records show. Court records did not indicate whether Buma entered a plea. The case was transferred to California, where the charges were filed.

Buma’s public defender, who represented him only for the arraignment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. No other counsel information for Buma was available.

Trump has vowed to go after Justice Department officials he has accused of unfairly targeting him, though Trump-appointed FBI director, Kash Patel, told lawmakers he would protect bureau staff against "political retribution."

Buma, who has publicly criticised the first Trump administration’s handling of classified information related to purported Russian influence operations, knew the information he took from the FBI was protected and that he was not authorized to share it, according to the filing.

Excerpts of a book draft Buma shared with “various individuals” in 2023 included confidential information related to FBI investigations into an unnamed foreign country’s weapons of mass destruction program, according to the filing.

Buma also screenshotted messages with a confidential source and they later appeared in a news article, the filing said.