An FBI whistleblower was investigated and later stripped of his security clearance for spreading “extremist propaganda” after he was accused of forwarding news articles to superiors and colleagues from so-called “dubious sources,” including the popular political news and polling aggregator RealClearPolitics.
FBI Staff Operations Specialist Marcus Allen had his security clearance suspended in January 2022, four months after he emailed “links from questionable sources” that were flagged as an “insider threat.” Thursday's Letter From whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight to congressional committees.
The Sept. 29, 2021 email called into question the accuracy of FBI Director Christopher Wray's testimony before Congress earlier that year about the extent of the FBI's confidential sources' involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The Washington Post reviewed some of the unclassified investigative files of a former FBI official who said the bureau based its decision about RealClear solely on “open-source research” by analysts into rankings provided by the website mediabiasfactcheck.com.
Allen's email also cited a report he said “came from the New York Times,” and Empower president Tristan Leavitt, in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), said a confidential informant had been on the Capitol.
“It is likely that the Washington chapter of our organization has not been forthright about today's events and the impact of government assets,” he wrote in a letter to executives.
Former FBI Washington Field Office Deputy Director Steven D'Antuono testified to the Judiciary Committee in June 2023 that the FBI actually forgot to count the number of informants and later had to audit how many were in Washington, D.C., to attend a “Stop the Steal” rally held by former President Donald Trump.
Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund also confirmed that 18 undercover FBI agents and 20 Department of Homeland Security agents were in the crowd.
But Allen's disclosure of classified internal information prompted an investigation by the FBI's security division.
An initial assessment by the FBI's Internal Threat Office cited the emails and Allen's views on the prosecution of the Jan. 6 rioters, as well as “comments regarding vaccine hesitancy and hostility toward U.S. government vaccination mandates, an unbiased view of conspiracy theories, and a hostile view of the U.S. government.”
“Allen may pose an inside threat to the FBI,” the evaluation said.
A later assessment addition stated Allen's September 2021 email was “the culmination of a linear pattern of escalating hostility that may ultimately lead to direct influence or manipulation of intelligence that could directly interfere with FBI mission objectives.”
The evaluation also said Allen “tried to convince colleagues and supervisors to reject legal precedent and protocol in favor of extremist propaganda.”
As for the RealClearPolitics link, the assessment claims the popular aggregator “takes legitimate information and adds specific language to skew the information to make it more favorable to right-leaning readers,” even though the FBI had used the link in its own Daily News Bulletin earlier that month.
Even the lead investigator in Allen's case disputed that the investigation into the staff operations specialist, a decorated Marine noncommissioned officer who served in Kuwait and Iraq, was based on the premise that his security clearance should be revoked because he had not professed loyalty to the United States.
Still, Leavitt wrote in his letter to Jordan that “Mr. Allen's protected whistleblower disclosure was the sole premise for initiating the security investigation” and “the central basis for terminating his security clearance on January 10, 2022.”
Allen's security clearance, which was based in part on his COVID-19 vaccination status, was suspended just over a week before a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration's government-wide vaccination mandate.
As part of a settlement with the FBI earlier this year, Allen had his security clearance reinstated, which had been suspended over concerns about his “loyalty to the United States.”
He resigned from the FBI after winning full compensation for back wages and benefits that were not paid to him during the investigation.
In 2019, Allen was named Employee of the Year for his work with the FBI's Charlotte Field Office Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Other FBI whistleblowers allege that Jeffrey Veltri, then acting deputy director of the FBI's security bureau, was one of several agents who used a litmus test to “purge” political conservatives like Allen from the bureau.
As of Monday, Veltri, who is now a special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami field office, is also overseeing the investigation into the second assassination attempt on President Trump.
Leavitt's Thursday letter said one of the reasons his appointment as South Florida field chief was delayed was because of an investigation into allegations that he retaliated against an FBI whistleblower.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz is currently reviewing disclosures from at least four whistleblowers represented by Empower Oversight about Beltoli's conduct with respect to Allen and others, and the FBI's abuse of the security clearance process.
“Special Agent Veltri was selected through a competitive process to lead the Miami field office and is charged with carrying out the FBI's mission fairly and without bias,” the FBI said in a statement. “Reports that political bias influenced his decisions, that he is targeting former military personnel, and about Special Agent Veltri's social media accounts and posts are demonstrably false.”
“The FBI has the utmost confidence in Special Agent in Charge Veltri's leadership of the Miami Field Office and his investigation into the attempted assassination of former President Trump,” the BI added. “This investigation is the FBI's top priority. We are working closely with our partners, with hundreds of agents from FBI Headquarters, Quantico and multiple field offices assisting in these efforts. All of us at the FBI are committed to following the facts and conducting this investigation in accordance with the rules.”
Allen, Leavitt and Horowitz are scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee's Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government on September 25 about a series of alleged FBI misconduct.
The FBI did not respond to a follow-up request for comment. Features of RealClearPolitics.
The site's publisher, Tom Bevan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
