Stephen Friend’s Jan. 6 constitutional objections led him out of the Bureau
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, Stephen Friend was told.
Why would he—an FBI special agent—not want to hunt down and jail rioters who killed police officers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021?
The question, its justification, and its accuracy were equally troubling when they were presented to Friend by an FBI superior on Aug. 23, 2022.
“I responded back that no police officers were killed by any of the individuals who were charged with the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Friend recalled.
“There was this pause on his part for a few seconds, like that was new information to him,” Friend recalled in an interview with The Epoch Times. “That was never anything that crossed his mind.”
It’s never easy being a conscientious objector.
This fork in the road for Special Agent Friend came out of his concern about the FBI’s plans to use a tactical team to arrest a misdemeanor Jan. 6 suspect. That kind of force against a nonviolent subject raised constitutional issues in Friend’s mind.
‘I Have an Oath of Office’
“I expressed that I have an oath of office,” Friend said during filming for an upcoming Epoch Times Jan. 6 documentary. “And while I’m aware that an arrest warrant is a legal order from a judge, I have an oath to protect the Constitution.
“I felt that us being outside the rules with following our case procedures was a potential breach of the Sixth Amendment for due process,” Friend said.
The arrestee in question had already been in contact with the FBI. He was interviewed by FBI agents. Yet plans were set to go in heavy for his arrest.
“There’s a whole array of methods that you can use to bring somebody into custody that doesn’t involve the use of a tactical team,” Friend said. “That really is the utmost, highest level of enforcement.”
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