(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A former FBI agent who was once the handler for tech billionaire Peter Thiel, and who later criticized the bureau for allegedly suppressing investigations into ties between Rudy Giuliani and Russian intelligence assets, was criminally charged in over an alleged domestic violence incident, Headline USA can reveal.
The former FBI counterintelligence agent, Johnathan Buma, was charged on August 25 in Orange County, California with corporal injury on spouse/cohabitant, assault with deadly weapon other than firearm, vandalism, and false imprisonment effected by violence, menace, fraud or deceit. Buma has pled not guilty and strongly disputes the charges, painting them as whistleblower retaliation.
Buma already faced federal charges for allegedly disclosing classified information and disclosing the identity of an FBI informant around November 2023. The August 25 domestic incident apparently led to him being arrested on Sept. 3 by U.S. Marshals and held in detention for six days. Buma was released early last month and now has an ankle monitor.
Buma declined to comment on the matter, instead referring Headline USA to his Substack, where he’s written about being incarcerated last month. The alleged victim of the domestic incident, whose name this publication is withholding, signaled that she and Buma have since reconciled.
“We are standing together,” she said, declining to comment further.
On his Substack account, Buma published an article last Saturday about his recent incarceration—though he doesn’t mention the alleged domestic violence incident.
🚨SCOOP: Records show that former FBI agent Johnathan Buma, who was once Peter Thiel's hander, was arrested after an alleged domestic violence incident in Orange County, California.
Buma declined to comment on the record, instead referring to me to his Substack, where he paints… https://t.co/L93evL1e8W pic.twitter.com/wF0r7NzleV
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) October 2, 2026
“I spent six days confined in a no-contact detention setting, isolated from the outside world, after allegations that I maintain were false. At one point, I was told that I had been charged with treason,” Buma wrote.
“I sat in a cell for days believing I might ultimately face execution, without even understanding what the actual charges were and without meaningful contact with the outside world. Whatever the intention, the psychological effect was devastating. I have not been charged with treason, and I did not commit treason.”
Buma further suggested that his recent run-in with the law stemmed from him self-publishing a book about his time at the FBI titled, Truth’s Last Stand: Unsealed.
“When I was released, the message I understood was unmistakable: unpublish Unsealed or risk going back into custody. So I unpublished it so that I could live to fight another day,” he said.
Buma has a pretrial hearing scheduled for October 21 for his state charges. His federal trial is set for March.
History
Buma, who worked for the FBI for 15 years, was initially arrested in March 2025 at a departure gate at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he was waiting to board an international flight. According to the DOJ, Buma printed copies of confidential FBI documents and messages and later shared the material with associates as part of a draft of a book he was writing on his time in the bureau.
Before his ouster from the FBI, he was the handling agent for Thiel, a billionaire GOP donor and military contractor. Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies, was an early Trump supporter for his 2016 campaign, and later bankrolled Vice President JD Vance’s run for U.S. Senate.
Thiel was outed as an FBI informant by Business Insider in October 2023—a month before the FBI raided Buma’s home.
“Thiel began providing information as a ‘confidential human source,’ or CHS, to Johnathan Buma, a Los Angeles-based FBI agent who specializes in investigating political corruption and foreign-influence campaigns,” Business Insider reported at the time.
Citing fellow FBI informant and former Thiel associate Charles Johnson, the Business Insider article said Thiel started working with the feds in the summer of 2021.
Johnson—the man who outed Thiel as a fed—told Business Insider that he’s the informant code-named “Genius” in Buma’s July 2023 whistleblower statement. That statement does not mention Thiel, but Business Insider independently confirmed that Thiel was indeed a registered FBI confidential human source, or CHS.
In a separate statement to journalist Arthur Bloom, Johnson said Thiel’s FBI code-name is the “Philosopher.”
Buma also provided Headline USA with a whistleblower disclosure in 2024. This publication didn’t report on the disclosure at the time, but published it when Buma was arrested in March 2025. In the disclosure, Buma mentions that the FBI seized a draft of his personal memoir when agents raided his home in November 2023. He acknowledged that the draft contained “sensitive” info, but said he believed he was operating within the bounds of the law.
An attorney representing Buma has not returned an emailed request for comment. Buma is represented in his federal matter by Mark Geragos, who previously worked on Hunter Biden’s defense team.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
