A recent whistleblower complaint seen by The Washington Post claims the FBI is abusing its security clearance powers to “purge” political conservatives from the bureau.
Federal law enforcement security divisions are suspending or revoking the certification of employees whose political affiliations or COVID-19 vaccination status are questionable, a supervisory special agent who previously worked for the department alleges.
The agent, who cannot be named, is described as a “registered Democrat” and is represented by the nonprofit group Empower Oversight, further alleges that senior FBI officials believed “FBI employees who fit a certain profile as political conservatives were deemed to pose security concerns and unworthy of working for the FBI.”
In the case of Marcus Allen, a former FBI Staff Operations Specialist (SOS) who had been suspended without pay for more than two years, the agency ignored “potentially exculpatory information” and overruled investigators who “concluded that SOS Allen’s ‘loyalty to the United States’ was beyond question and that the suspension of his security clearance was unjustified.”
The decision came after Allen told his superiors at the FBI’s Charlotte field office that he had no plans to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Empower President Tristan Levitt said in a letter to members of Congress on Tuesday that the supervisory special agent faced retaliation for “disclosing the improper suspension and firing of other employees.” [sic] There were other people besides Allen who had “security clearance.”
A full disclosure of the agent’s whistleblowing allegations and a complaint of retaliation was also filed by Empower on June 28 with the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ OIG) and the Office of Professional Ethics.
“The outcomes of security clearance investigations and adjudications were often predetermined by the Office’s Acting Deputy Director and Acting Section Chief for Security Clearance Investigations and Adjudications, who overrode staff on the ground and sometimes even dictated the language of documents used in the security clearance process,” Leavitt said in a letter to the ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and the Congressional Whistleblower Protection Caucus.
“Over the past few years, the FBI has used the certification process to drive employees out of the bureau by inflicting severe financial hardship on them – by suspending their certification, suspending them without pay, leaving them in unpaid limbo while requiring them to obtain permission to take other jobs, and postponing final certification decisions indefinitely, in some cases for years,” they told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Senator Jerry Nadler (D-New York), Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), as well as Whistleblower Caucus Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Vice Chairman Ron Wyden (R-Oregon).
The FBI’s “Acting Deputy Director” Jeffrey Veltri and “Acting Section Chief” Dena Perkins reported to Deputy Director Jennifer Lee Moore, who denied in a sworn affidavit last year that the FBI had retaliated against whistleblowers.
“The FBI never uses suspension as a disciplinary tool,” Moore said in an interview with the House Judiciary Committee in April 2023. “Suspension is only used in national security matters.”
The FBI threatened employees to divulge whether their colleagues supported former President Donald Trump or were hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but those answers were not included in the final suspension or revocation letters for investigators, including for Allen.
“The same employees at the center of these inappropriate conduct continue to lead investigations or hold senior management positions within the FBI,” Levitt wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
He called for an “independent review” of the whistleblower’s revelations and for “the passage of legislation to correct corrupt security clearance procedures and provide effective protections for future whistleblowers.”
Leavitt also told Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz that the whistleblower supervisory special agent was indefinitely suspended just a year before he was eligible to retire and “should be immediately reinstated to his job with back pay and benefits for the time he was on unpaid leave.”
Horowitz also added that the FBI should expand its recent investigation into security clearance procedures to investigate Perkins, Veltri and others “who are part of the FBI’s leadership and allowed these misconduct to flourish.”
“The FBI’s leadership is being weaponized from the inside,” Grassley told The Post on Tuesday. “And I’m not just saying this because Chuck Grassley is the only one saying this. Over the years, numerous FBI whistleblowers have revealed the same thing to my office.”
“When the FBI politically persecutes its own agents, it is an affront to justice. My oversight of the Attorney General [Merrick] Garland and [FBI] director [Christopher] “Mr. Wray has been unable to correct this inappropriate conduct and bring this scandal to an end, and it continues to be.”
A spokesman for Horowitz’s office declined to comment.
DOJ OIG notified Empower Oversight. Letter of June 26th The company said it would welcome information from “additional officials” about “any concerns that may have been asked of FBI officials.”
Allen, a former U.S. Marine and Iraq War veteran, ultimately had an FBI security clearance case file that was more than 1,700 pages long.
He drew attention after expressing concerns that Wray may have given “false” testimony to Congress about whether the FBI had a confidential source on the scene during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
FBI officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
