An FBI agent leading the investigation into the second assassination attempt on President Donald Trump was the target of an internal “retaliatory investigation” that was motivated by anti-Trump, anti-conservative bias, a whistleblower has revealed.
Jeff Veltri, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Miami office, who is currently leading the investigation into Ryan Routh, the man accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump, was under investigation by the FBI for retaliating against conservatives within the bureau by identifying them as “national security concerns.”
Veltri, who served as section chief of security at FBI headquarters at the time the bureau used the so-called “Trump Questionnaire,” had already been accused of retaliating against conservatives, and previous reports have revealed that he was instructed to remove anti-conservative and anti-Trump posts from his social media accounts before his promotion.
The revelation was made in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) from whistleblower group Empower Oversight, whose client, former FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen, is scheduled to testify before the House Subcommittee on Federal Weaponization on Wednesday, September 25. Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt is also scheduled to testify.
2024-09-19 Tl to Jordan-hjc – FBI (1) by Breitbart News On Scribd
According to the report, “At that time, under Acting DAD Veltri, the FBI's Security Division (“SecD”) investigated the political beliefs and personal medical decisions of FBI employees as part of security clearance investigations. Additional whistleblowers from within SecD provided information that SecD leadership improperly encouraged the use of these factors when considering the suspension and revocation of FBI employees' security clearances for removal from the FBI and failed to properly document those factors in FBI files.”
The report adds, “Witnesses also heard Veltri state openly that while FBI employees may have First Amendment rights, they are not entitled to security clearances. It is difficult to imagine a clear signal from the leader of the Secretary of State that he approved, if not encouraged, the use of security clearances to purge employees in a way that is not constitutionally possible.”
Among the many examples documented in the report was one in which Director Beltoli ordered the revocation of the certification of an FBI intelligence analyst who, during a discussion of the FBI's IT systems, wrote that the 2020 election may have been stolen and that he wanted to see the results of an investigation into voter fraud.
According to the report, Veltri “made statements to the witness that suggested he did not believe the employee was qualified to receive a security clearance because he did not believe in the Constitution.”
In another troubling case, the whistleblower report said Veltri said an agent's “Christian faith as a devout Catholic was the reason he was denied access to classified information.”
“Once again, it is difficult to imagine a clearer signal from the Secretary of State's leadership that improper consideration of FBI employees' First Amendment-protected religious beliefs has unconstitutionally influenced the security clearance process,” the report reads.
At least once, a decision to revoke Veltri's security clearance was overturned after it became clear that it was not based on the facts of the case.
Bradley Jay is Capitol Hill correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter. Translator.
