A Weaponized FBI: It's Real, Say Whistleblowers, Boasting Scars to Prove It

These include allegations that at least two of the fired officials, Jeffrey Veltri and Dena Perkins, manipulated the security clearance review process to personally and professionally punish conservatives, COVID-19 vaccine skeptics, and Jan. 6 whistleblowers who reported suspected bureau malfeasance, and retaliated against those who came to the whistleblowers’ defense. 

A third, Timothy Dunham, is also alleged to have improperly suspended security clearances.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley is expected to read numerous accounts of alleged misconduct perpetrated by these and other officials into the record Thursday morning as the committee considers the nomination of Kash Patel for FBI director.

Patel has been nominated to replace Wray, who came under fire from Republicans who believed the bureau targeted Trump supporters, parents, pro-life activists, and others. 

The Republican allegations informed President Trump’s first-day executive order, “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” and his Jan. 31 directive terminating eight high-level figures – including those overseeing branches from counterterrorism to criminal investigations and the heads of the bureau’s Miami and Washington field offices. The memo also called for a review of the work of all FBI personnel pertaining to Jan. 6, numbering 5,000 in all, for misconduct.

While no findings have been issued regarding that larger probe, the Jan. 31 memo, drafted by Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Emil Bove, suggests a legitimate rationale for terminating the FBI leaders. It notes that the bureau and they themselves were complicit in malfeasance pertaining to the Jan. 6 investigation, the weaponization of security clearances, and resisting Justice Department directives. Consequently, Bove wrote, the DOJ did not trust them “to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”

The Justice Department did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ inquiries in connection with this story, and RCI was unable to reach Veltri, Perkins, Dunham, or the five other terminated officials.

Democrats have assailed the firings. A letter signed by all 10 Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats stated, “Our alarm has only grown in the past two weeks as this purge of experienced career prosecutors and agents has expanded … We can only assume these decisions are intended to prevent the Department from investigating national security and public corruption, while also serving as political retribution against the President’s perceived enemies and stoking fear among the dedicated and talented workforce in our nation’s premier law enforcement agency.”

Sen. Mark Warner, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, added: “These are people who have served our country, protected Americans and put criminals behind bars. Now they have been pushed out simply for doing their jobs.”

A central complaint of the whistleblowers is that, consistent with the Bove memo, FBI officials weaponized security clearances. Specifically, they allege that the bureau’s Security Division has baselessly suspended and/or revoked security clearances in retaliation against those who have made protected disclosures. As maintaining a security clearance is an essential condition of employment, the suspension of one’s clearance typically triggers an indefinite employment suspension without pay. The suspended are also barred from seeking outside employment or accepting gifts. The associated probes can last months and even years, with the targeted waiting first for their cases to be fully investigated and adjudicated, and then sometimes waiting still longer during an appeals process. 

The process can be so onerous that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has noted that it can be leveraged to encourage disfavored employees to resign rather than fight a lengthy and costly battle.

While the FBI has denied claims that the Security Division has abused this power in recent years, Horowitz detailed misconduct in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last September. His team had seen evidence indicating that the division had used the investigation and adjudication process to punish whistleblowers.

One whose case Horowitz highlighted involved Marcus Allen, a decorated Marine Corps veteran and award-winning FBI Staff Operations Specialist. Veltri and Perkins allegedly played an integral role in targeting him.

Allen’s duties included supporting the Charlotte, N.C. field office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in ongoing investigations and intelligence requests pertaining to Jan. 6. This included gathering and sharing relevant open-source information. In September 2021, Allen reported to his supervisors that various news outlets, including RealClearInvestigations, RealClearPolitics, and the New York Times, had reported that confidential FBI informants were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and a “significant counter-story” had formed.

Allen told his colleagues, “There is a good possibility the DC elements of our organization are not being forthright about the events of the day or the influence of government assets.” Minutes later, he forwarded his colleagues an email with a link to a video contrasting the Times’ report with then-FBI Director Wray’s testimony in March 2021 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggesting Wray may not have provided the whole truth about the FBI’s links to Jan. 6.

Suspended Without Pay 27 Months

This would set off a chain of events that would leave Allen suspended and without pay for 27 months – forced, along with his wife, to take early withdrawals from their retirement accounts to make ends meet.

Charlotte field office personnel forwarded Allen’s emails to the FBI’s Office of General Counsel, which passed them to Veltri – then-head of the Security Division section responsible for all personnel investigations.

Rather than first passing concerns to the division’s referral evaluation unit, as is customary, Veltri instigated an immediate investigation on the grounds of Allen’s potential lack of allegiance to the U.S. A successor would call this an “abortion of the process.”

Days later, Veltri received an email from the Charlotte field office, which expressed “added concerns” regarding Allen. Delivered on behalf of that office’s head, then-Special Agent in Charge Robert Wells, one of the eight FBI officials the Trump administration would terminate, it noted that Allen was one of two employees not to attest to his COVID-19 vaccination status, even though President Biden had made vaccination mandatory for all federal employees.

Veltri’s then-Assistant Section Chief Perkins used the email as justification to instruct the FBI’s Insider Threat Office to open an assessment into Allen.

That office would review Allen’s communications and conclude he harbored “hostile views towards the FBI and current administration.” To justify this characterization, it stated that Allen had sent “links from questionable sources,” including RealClearPolitics. It surmised Allen was trafficking in “extremist propaganda” and that he “may pose an insider threat to the FBI.”

Yet a subsequent probe of Allen’s communications by the FBI would find “no information validating” the basis for an investigation into Allen. Interviews with four Charlotte field office officials indicated they lacked evidence that he was disloyal, sympathized with Jan. 6 rioters, or was otherwise ill-equipped to handle his duties.

Despite the misgivings of the investigator and his supervisors on the case, IG Horowitz found that security division management – which included Veltri and Perkins – insisted that Allen’s security clearance be suspended pending investigation.

A January 2022 memorandum did just that, claiming on the basis of his emails and refusal to comply with the vaccine mandate that Allen “promoted unreliable information which indicates support for the events of January 6^th” and “espoused conspiratorial views.” 

According to the D.C.-based watchdog group that helped represent Allen, Empower Oversight, the agent was in limbo for 27 months while his case was investigated, adjudicated, and appealed. 

When interviewed by the security division in connection with his case – some four months after his clearance and pay had been suspended – Allen, a self-described “faithful Catholic," indicated that “the Holy Spirit compelled him” to make the disclosure that would land him in hot water.

Veltri would allegedly deride Allen for that remark, suggesting, according to another division official represented by Empower Oversight, that he “was delusional for referring to his religious belief … for disclosing wrongdoing.”

Even though, as his counsel has detailed, all line-level employees who reviewed the Allen case believed he should retain his clearance, the bureau revoked his clearance under pressure from management, purportedly including Veltri. 

Three individuals within the division responsible for processing Allen’s case would be reassigned in retaliation for disclosing misconduct in the division’s targeting of him.

It was not until May 2024 – after Horowitz’s office had initiated a reprisal investigation – that Allen reached a settlement with the Justice Department, agreeing to resign in exchange for full back pay and reinstatement of his security clearance.

Horowitz’s office would issue a May 2024 memorandum providing employees claiming reprisal additional means to defend themselves against indefinite unpaid suspension in light of Allen’s tribulations.

The Case of Garret O'Boyle

In emotional testimony before Congress last fall, Allen lamented that Special Agent Garret O’Boyle was being subjected to a similarly tortuous process.

O’Boyle, a veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, alleges that he was targeted by Perkins on baseless grounds – and has been suspended without pay for nearly two-and-a-half years.

Empower Oversight, which also serves as his counsel alongside several Security Division whistleblowers, has detailed that in late 2021 and early 2022, O’Boyle began making a series of protected disclosures, first internally regarding FBI COVID-19 policies that he believed were unconstitutional and unlawful, and then to Congress concerning the politicization of the FBI. 

Among the congressional disclosures was his view that the bureau may have opened a politically motivated criminal investigation into conservative muckraker Project Veritas – about which the Justice Department had made false claims in court.

In May 2022, Project Veritas published an interview with a masked FBI official making similar claims.

After applying for and being accepted to a new assignment with a start date of September 2022, in August, O’Boyle sold his Kansas home and prepared to move to Virginia with his three children and his wife, who was eight months pregnant. On the first day, upon arriving at his new post, O’Boyle was accused of leaking information to the press and had his security clearance suspended. He and his family were effectively rendered homeless, since he had not closed on his new home, and was left without an income.

The Security Division investigator on O’Boyle’s case had previously told the then-Acting Section Chief Perkins that there was no evidence O’Boyle had leaked anything to the media. Rather, he had disclosed to his superiors that he believed O’Boyle may have made protected disclosures to Congress. Yet, as Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt told the House Judiciary Committee last fall, Perkins “responded that she had already briefed the FBI’s 7^th floor that SA O’Boyle was a media leaker, and did not want to correct this misunderstanding.”

Evidence suggests that Veltri and Perkins discussed O’Boyle’s transfer in advance of his move, with whistleblowers inferring that a scheme was hatched to ensnare him.

Shortly after the suspension, Veltri would be made head of the FBI’s Miami field office, its fifth-largest. He would lead the investigation into the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. At the time, earlier reports resurfaced that Veltri had demonstrated an anti-Trump bias, claims the FBI batted down.

The bureau revoked O’Boyle’s security clearance in July 2024 after it became aware he had made protected disclosures to the DOJ inspector general and in advance of coming hearings where O’Boyle’s plight was likely to be exposed. 

That month, O’Boyle’s legal team, which also includes the American Center for Law & Justice and Binnall Law Group, filed a “request for reconsideration” of the revocation. That entitles O’Boyle to review the evidence used to justify the revocation. O’Boyle’s team did not receive such information until six months later, on Jan. 30, 2025. The receipt of that information triggers a 30-day period with which to prepare and submit his appeal. 

“The crazy Kafkaesque system puts deadlines on the employee, but the FBI has an infinity whenever it wants – zero deadlines on its responses,” Jason Foster, Empower Oversight’s Founder and Chairman, told RCI.

Perkins reportedly pushed an unnamed adjudicator who had recommended ending O’Boyle’s suspension out of his job .

According to this adjudicator’s disclosure to Congress, “Perkins has moved several other employees who report to her for recommending decisions contrary to her interests [and] bases many of her decisions on favoritism.”

She “is considered corrupt and dishonest by FBI employees,” he said.

These claims dovetail with those of a former supervisory special agent at the Security Division. The agent, a Democrat, is also represented by Empower Oversight.

In a July 2024 letter summarizing some of the unnamed whistleblower’s claims, Leavitt said his client had observed that: 

The outcomes of clearance investigations and adjudications were often pre-determined by the Division’s acting Deputy Assistant Director [Veltri] and the acting Section Chief [Perkins] responsible for security clearance investigations and adjudications, who often overruled line staff and even dictated the wording of documents in the clearance process.

In a related letter to Horowitz and the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the FBI official of nearly 20 years disclosed, through Empower, that during his time as a Security Division investigator under the leadership of Veltri and Perkins, it was common for investigators to ask “whether employees under investigation had vocalized support for former President Donald Trump or whether they had vocalized objection to the COVID-19 vaccine.” 

Veltri and Perkins allegedly would “ask in staff meetings whether employees whose clearances were under investigation had received the vaccine.”

The supervisory special agent asserted that the duo’s perspective “was that 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.”

In April 2022, investigators overseen by Veltri and Perkins issued a questionnaire reflecting this view in connecting with a probe of a 12-year FBI veteran whose security clearance had been suspended one month prior. 

Under penalty of potential disciplinary action, investigators asked co-workers of the suspended employee whether he had vocalized “support for President Trump,” “objection to COVID-19 vaccination,” or “intent to attend 01/06/2021” – a reference to the Capitol riot.

The suspension came some 15 months after the agent had self-reported, following the events of Jan. 6, that while on personal leave, he had peacefully observed activities among crowds near the Capitol. After making disclosures to Congress regarding alleged politicization and security clearance process abuses in his case and others, he would have his security clearance revoked. After appealing, with the process dragging on, the agent retired.

As for the longtime supervisory special agent who had reported on Veltri and Perkins’ misconduct, he too had his security clearance suspended. Foster told RCI that the individual who signed off on the agent’s suspension was Timothy Dunham. 

Another unnamed Empower client, Foster told RCI, claims that Dunham threatened to suspend the individual’s security clearance as a means of retaliation and delayed reinstating the security clearance of another employee for over a year.  

Dunham served as the executive assistant director of the FBI’s human resources branch – under which the Security Division sits – from the summer of 2023 until his termination, pursuant to the Bove memorandum.

These terminations may be only the beginning of efforts to remedy alleged malfeasance pertaining to whistleblowers. Attorney General Pam Bondi, in establishing the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group shortly after her confirmation, indicated that one of its focuses will be examining “the retaliatory targeting, and in some instances criminal prosecution, of legitimate whistleblowers.”