White House adviser Stephen Miller visited FBI headquarters just days before federal prosecutors charged a man accused of harassing his wife, a visit former Justice Department officials called unusual.
Stephen Miller spoke at a training conference for FBI counterterrorism agents on Sept. 29, multiple sources told CBS News in a report published Thursday.
Two days later, federal prosecutors in Boston charged John Anthony Proia III with cyberstalking Stephen Miller’s wife, podcaster Katie Miller, and her family, the network reported. Proia, 41, has pleaded not guilty.
Multiple former Justice Department officials told CBS that Stephen Miller’s appearance broke with norms adopted after the Watergate scandal to keep the White House out of the FBI’s criminal investigations.
They said the visit was also unusual because Stephen Miller is an alleged victim and potential witness in the Boston case.
“Stephen Miller’s presence at FBI headquarters, including his speech, is a violation of an important norm,” James Davidson, a former FBI agent who now leads the nonprofit FBI Integrity Project, told CBS.
“The White House should have little official contact with FBI executive management and virtually no contact with FBI middle management regarding official matters or investigations — especially one in which he and his wife are victims,” Davidson said.
The White House insisted that “Miller interacts with all law-enforcement agencies on a regular basis related to public safety, national security, and counterterrorism” in his role as Homeland Security Advisor.
At the training, Stephen Miller told the agents that no threat case is too small, whether the target is a member of Congress, a spouse, a friend, or a college campus speaker, according to a senior FBI official.
Prosecutors accuse Proia of contacting Katie Miller more than 40 times by phone and text in August and September, calling multiple times a day from different numbers, CBS News reported Oct. 1.
Proia also allegedly texted Katie Miller’s parents, the Justice Department said. One message to her mother called Stephen Miller “evil” and used an obscenity.
“Hope your daughter marrying a Jewish Nazi/white supremacist is working out for you…,” Proia allegedly wrote to Katie Miller’s father, according to prosecutors.
The indictment accuses Proia of acting “with the intent to harass and intimidate” and causing “substantial emotional distress” to a victim and that victim’s immediate family. It does not name Stephen and Katie Miller, but sources confirmed to CBS that they are the victims.
Federal prosecutors filed 412 cases nationwide under the cyberstalking law Proia is accused of breaking from 2010 to 2020, an average of fewer than 40 a year, according to a study by the RAND Corporation for the Justice Department’s research arm.
Days before Stephen Miller’s speech, Darren Cox, who leads the FBI’s Washington Field Office, transferred the office’s two most senior counterterrorism agents, sources told CBS. The transfers followed complaints from Stephen and Katie Miller that the agents were moving too slowly on the Proia investigation, according to CBS. White House officials said the couple did not speak with the agents or request the change.
“This was a personnel decision made at the Washington field office level alone based on our constant evaluation of mission needs. Any suggestion otherwise is false,” Cox said in a statement.
“Politically well-connected people who are related to victims do not have a right to jawbone FBI supervisors to do what they want them to do, and if they are political and throwing around their political connections, it’s even worse,” said Jeffrey Breinholt, a longtime former Justice Department counterterrorism prosecutor.
“[The bureau] pursued these cases based on appropriate predicate [grounds] and evidence of alleged crimes — not because the White House ordered an investigation,” an FBI spokesperson told CBS.
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