FBI Whistleblower–a Democrat–Calls Out Politicized Targeting in Security Clearances

An FBI supervisory special assistant—and registered Democrat—filed a whistleblower complaint that notes the bureau was pushing politics as part of decisions on security clearances.

He says that after he disclosed the FBI’s improper suspension and revocation of other employees’ security clearances, the FBI retaliated and suspended his security clearance.  

On Tuesday, he sent a disclosure to the House and Senate Judiciary committees. On Friday, he filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility about the FBI’s security division.

“The client—a registered Democrat—witnessed firsthand as an SSA [supervisory special agent] how the FBI’s Security Division improperly suspended or revoked employees’ security clearances whose political views, medical views, or even ethnicity were questioned by Security Division leadership,” wrote Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, on behalf of the whistleblower to Congress.

The supervisor in the security division, whose name is not being disclosed by his lawyers with Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group, filed the complaints.

“Over the last few years, the FBI has used the clearance process as a means to force employees out of the FBI by inflicting severe financial distress: suspending their clearance, suspending them from duty without pay, requiring them to obtain permission to take any other job while stuck in this unpaid limbo, and delaying their final clearance adjudication indefinitely—even years,” Leavitt wrote. 

The whistleblower disclosure describes that the FBI’s Security Division leadership revoked the security clearance of Marcus Allen, an FBI staff operations specialist who questioned the official narrative about Jan. 6. After a review, Allen’s security clearance was reinstated. 

The disclosure also notes he questioned why the FBI also revoked the security clearance of FBI Special Agent Steve Friend’s clearances in advance of his May 18, 2023, testimony before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Friend, who was on the joint terrorism task force, said he raised questions to supervisors about the focus on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. 

Friend and other agents have said the FBI can circumvent whistleblower protections laws against dismissal by suspending a security clearance. 

The FBI did not immediately respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal by publication time. 

According to documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, FBI agents worked about 16,000 more hours during the pay period after the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, than they did during the pay period of the 2020 riots in Washington, D.C.

This is the latest in a string of problems for the bureau stemming from whistleblowers and former FBI agents coming forward with stories about the FBI focusing on pro-life protesters, developing a “threat tag” to monitor parents who spoke up at school board meetings, and relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization that brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” putting them on a map with the Ku Klux Klan.

The FBI’s Richmond office cited the SPLC in targeting “radical traditional Catholics” for surveillance in a memo last January, before the national office officially rescinded the memo. The Justice Department took a briefing with the SPLC when it released a “hate” report in 2023.