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A longtime FBI agent has been charged with unlawfully taking and disclosing protected FBI files, according to court records reviewed by CBS News.Johnathan Buma, who specialized in national security and terror cases, has been released on $100,000 bond, with orders to appear in court in Los Angeles.Buma was arrested as he boarded an international flight at JFK airport in New York, according to charging documents. The Justice Department’s filings allege Buma printed of caches of FBI records from an internal agency network. Nearly 130 files might have been compromised, according to an FBI investigators. The government argues the records were clearly marked as confidential or secure and were copied by Buma in the hours before he left his job in the bureau in October 2023.The charging documents also allege that days after taking copies of the records, Buma used social media to post excerpts of a book he was writing about his career with the bureau. Federal investigators allege the book included information Buma obtained from the FBI about an investigation of a foreign nation’s weapons of mass destruction program. Before he left his job, Buma claimed to be a whistleblower and was publicly critical of the Trump administration during the President Trump’s first term. He had also testified before a Senate committee in 2023 that his informants were the first to alert the government about possible misconduct by Hunter Biden business dealings in Ukraine with an energy company. He said they provided information “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.”
According to the charging documents, Buma is also accused of saving screenshots of messages he exchanged with a confidential FBI source.In court filings submitted in a U.S. District Court in New York, investigators referenced Buma’s own book manuscript. In one section, Buma refers to himself as “one of the nation’s top performing counterintelligence agents.”There was no immediate response from Buma’s attorney to a request for comment. No plea has been entered in case yet.Buma was a ticketed passenger on an outbound international flight on Monday from JFK airport, according to the Justice Department. He was taken into custody by FBI employees at 10 p.m. Monday, before the flight departed.
He worked for the FBI, including out of an Orange County, California, office of the FBI’s Los Angeles division during his 15-year career. Buma focused on counterintelligence and counterproliferation matters.Editor’s note: An earlier version of this report said that Johnathan Buma was charged with disclosing classified records, but the records were confidential. The article has been updated.
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Scott MacFarlane
Scott MacFarlane is CBS News’ Justice correspondent. He has covered Washington for two decades, earning 20 Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards. His reporting has resulted directly in the passage of five new laws.
