by Steven Richards and John Solomon
An FBI supervisor is blowing the whistle on his own organization, alleging to the Justice Department’s chief watchdog and Congress that the bureau has been improperly suspending or revoking the security clearances of agents it believes hold conservative political views.
The new whistleblower’s allegations surfaced Tuesday in correspondence obtained by “Just the News” that was sent to the House and Senate Judiciary committees and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, dramatically claiming that as a supervisory special agent he witnessed efforts by senior FBI brass to target employees who supported Donald Trump or opposed COVID-19 vaccines.
“If an FBI employee fit a certain profile as a political conservative, they were viewed as security concerns and unworthy to work at the FBI,” the whistleblower’s lawyer, Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt, wrote Horowitz in requesting an independent investigation.
The supervisory special agent, a registered Democrat whose name was redacted from the letters, was in charge of security clearance reviews for all FBI employees on the East Coast and alleged that other agents involved in the process also share his concerns that FBI leadership has been improperly applying a political litmus test to the question of whether employees get their top secret clearance re-approved.
The agent alleged he and other agents who voiced concerns were retaliated against with transfers or suspensions, the letter states.
FBI’s internal affair unit “have already been made aware of reprisal by the same SecD officials for the same reasons against other SecD employees,” the letter to Horowitz stated. “In light of SecD’s pattern of abuse of the security clearance process and retaliation against SecD employees who try to stop that abuse.”
The FBI told Just the News on Tuesday that it had no comment on the whistleblower’s complaint.
The supervisory agent’s claim back up documents first reported by “Just the News” last month that security clearance reviews inside the FBI were considering questions like whether an employee supported Trump, expressed concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine or had attended a Second Amendment rally.
The new whistleblower says he was once assigned a supervisory role over the case of another FBI whistleblower, Marcus Allen, whom the agency had investigated over his political views. The security division specifically investigated Allen under Guideline A – Allegiance to the United States and raised concerns that he was hesitant to “attest to his current vaccination status.”
Despite lower-ranking agents’ findings that Allen had not violated the guidelines, higher-ranking officials pushed for his security clearance to be revoked for questioning the January 6 prosecutions, according to the new letter.
In June, the FBI reached a settlement with Allen – who is also represented by Empower Oversight – to restore his security clearance and pay him 27 months of back pay and benefits that the agency had withheld during his suspension.
The whistleblower, who submitted a complaint to the Justice Department inspector general on June 28, alleges that the security division responsible for reviewing clearances is infected by political bias and that he had his own security clearance suspended in a retaliatory move by the agency after he raised concerns about the way it was investigating its employees.
The Allen investigation is just one review that the new whistleblower observed during his time at the agency. His complaint to Horowitz details several other examples of probes focused on employees’ views about January 6 and vaccines, hot button political topics and matters of opinion usually protected by the First Amendment.
The compliant also alleges that the new whistleblower was himself retaliated against for making protected disclosures about the behavior he observed by FBI leadership.
The day after he contacted the inspector general with complaints about one of his supervisors, he was called in to a meeting and notified that he would be suspended for sending an image of “health and wellness” activities and for “performance” issues and “attitude,” according to the complaint.
“As I have written before, the FBI is not a private club for FBI executives to make in their own image. Empower Oversight respectfully requests that you work swiftly to independently corroborate the information in the attached disclosure with other witnesses, publicly document your findings, hold Director Wray and any responsible FBI officials accountable, and pass legislation to fix the abusive security clearance process and successfully protect future whistleblowers,” Leavitt wrote.
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John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News. Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “FBI Agents” by Tim Pierce. CC BY 2.0.
