Multiple FBI whistleblowers have stepped up in recent days to tell the House Judiciary Committee that high-ranking FBI officials are targeting conservative agents—particularly those with military backgrounds—and are trying to force them out of the Bureau.
Last week, at least three FBI whistleblowers told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that security clearances were revoked from personnel based on religious or politically conservative beliefs, according to the Washington Times’ Kerry Picket.
One of the whistleblowers reportedly told Congress that FBI executives targeted current employees associated with former FBI employees who were interviewed in the documentary “Police State.”
The movie, co-created by conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and produced by talk radio host Dan Bongino, features former FBI agents Kyle Seraphin and Steven Friend and accuses Democratic Party leaders, and top officials in the FBI, CIA and Justice Department, of censoring, harassing and imprisoning their political opponents.
The whistleblowers allege that officials in the FBI’s security division (known as SecD) reportedly “assigned agents from field offices to conduct security clearance investigations of employees suspected of communicating with or providing information to people involved with the movie.”
SecD recently attempted to recruit 100 to 300 special agents to conduct these internal investigations temporarily, according to the whistleblower information.
Another SecD employee said Mr. Seraphin’s security clearance investigation did not follow the policy of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Mr. Seraphin was subjected to a security clearance investigation, according to the disclosure, after his field office notified FBI official Dena Perkins that a police officer who was out of his jurisdiction confronted him about practicing his firearm shooting at a range/shooting area.
“The minor allegations against Seraphin had no national security nexus. An administrative misconduct investigation would have likely resulted in, at most, a letter of censure or written counseling,” the disclosure states. “However, Seraphin had previously refused to take a Covid vaccine, which was an obvious indication to SecD that an employee is politically conservative.
“There were approximately 300 FBI employees who refused to take the Covid vaccine and were communicating with each other about the FBI Headquarters’ discriminating against conservative Christian employees and others who refused the vaccine for political reasons,” the disclosure to lawmakers read.
One of the whistleblowers said a special agent in the Miami field office was temporarily assigned to conduct security clearances of associates to Mr. Friend.
The disclosure claims FBI executives violated the Security Executive Agent Directive 4 (SEAD 4), the “national security guideline for allowing intelligence community agencies to conduct security clearance adjudications.”
The whistleblowers named names.
“Specifically, SecD Section Chief Section Matthew Nagle, Deputy Assistant Director Lawerence Buckley, and Assistant Section Chief Dena Perkins have caused security clearance investigators to adjudicate security clearances in a manner that is contrary to the SEAD IV guidelines,” the disclosure said.
SecD is “intentionally misinterpreting the SEAD IV guidelines so that it can deny, suspend and revoke security clearances of FBI employees because of political affiliations and beliefs.”
The disclosure said these security division officials have been exaggerating single incidents of alleged misconduct to be substituted for multiple incidents of misconduct while using security clearance investigations to substitute for internal misconduct investigations.
When an internal investigation finds minor misconduct incidents, the penalty typically ranges from oral or written reprimands to performance counseling, according to the whistleblowers’ account.
“Nagle, Buckley, and Perkins have been expanding the scope of security investigations in a manner that violates ODNI’s rules and policies,” the disclosure states. “The basis for security revocations are specifically enumerated by ODNI.”
According to one SecD employee, Perkins, who has been in her job since 2018, retaliated against an employee who reported her to the office of Attorney General Merrick Garland. The day after the complaint was filed, Perkins suspended the employee’s clearance.
The Bureau denied the whistleblowers’ allegations in a statement to the Times.
“The FBI does not target or take adverse action against employees for exercising their First Amendment rights or for their political views; to allege otherwise is false and misleading. The FBI is required to follow established policies and procedures, to include a thorough investigation, when suspending or revoking a security clearance,” the FBI said.
“Oh! Well… the @FBI public affairs office called @KerryPicket on a holiday weekend due to the TREMENDOUS backlash they are getting both internally and externally on this story,” Seraphin quipped on X.
Late last week, additional whistleblowers stepped forward to tell the House Judiciary Committee that FBI officials were specifically targeting former military members over their political beliefs.
According to their disclosures, obtained by the Times, a Marine and other military veterans at the FBI were “accused of disloyalty to the U.S. because they fit the profile of a supporter of former President Donald Trump.”
The whistleblowers said Perkins and Jeffrey Veltri, deputy assistant director of the bureau’s security division, specifically targeted employees who served in the Marine Corps or other military branches.
The agents were stripped of security clearances, sidelining them on the job and pushing them toward the exit, the whistleblowers said.
Veltri and Perkins allegedly declared or attempted to declare that the Marine and other veterans were “disloyal to the United States of America.”
“In these cases there was no indication that any of the individuals had any affiliation to a foreign power or held any belief against the United States,” it said.
Perkins and Veltri also allegedly viewed refusal to wear a face mask, refusal to get the COVID-19 jab and participation in religious activities as signs that an employee was a “right-wing radical and disloyal to the United States.”
Congress must specifically investigate allegations that Jeffrey Veltri, deputy assistant director of @FBI security division, and FBI assistant section chief Dena Perkins – singled out a Marine and other veterans in the Bureau for their political views. https://t.co/ZbT172vQzY pic.twitter.com/Krry1jY1dz
— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) November 13, 2023
In one case, Perkins attempted to revoke the security clearance of an FBI employee who was a Marine veteran, “but information showed that the initial allegations against the employee were unfounded,” according to the disclosure.
This did not stop Ms. Perkins from ordering her investigators to canvass at least 10 police departments where the employee lived for any allegations or violations of law.
“During the process, Perkins was attempting to provide evidence so she could terminate this employee because he was ‘Disloyal to the United States,’” the disclosure states.
Happy #Veterans_Day unless you are an @FBI employee. They eat their own. #FBI Security Division (SecD) considered #Military service a proxy for “disloyalty” to the #USA
HQ SSA Dena Perkins & now @FBIMiamiFL SAC David Veltri were named specifically. #USMC #USArmy #USN #USAF #USCG https://t.co/EyeL6syLu5 pic.twitter.com/dYn2cwBMvd
— Kyle Seraphin (@KyleSeraphin) November 11, 2023
“An employee advised that at least two of the publicly known FBI whistleblowers were former members of the military, specifically … Kyle Seraphin and Garret[t] O’Boyle,” according to one of the disclosures.
The security clearance investigation of Seraphin did not follow the policy guidelines of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the whistleblowers say.
Seraphin was subjected to a security clearance investigation after his field office notified Perkins that a police officer had confronted him about practicing with his gun at a shooting range.
O’Boyle, a former police officer and decorated Army veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, lost his security clearance in September 2022 ostensibly over allegations that he leaked information about a criminal investigation to Project Veritas that FBI officials said “compromised the case.”
But Clark and Perkins allegedly knew O’Boyle did not pass the information to Project Veritas or any other news media, according to the disclosure.
“At the time, the Security Division suspended FBI employee Garret O’Boyle, the supervisor in charge of O’Boyle’s Case, Sean Clark, had already determined that O’Boyle did not provide any information to either Project Veritas or the press,” the disclosure said.
“SecD was operating under the theory that O’Boyle had provided the information to another FBI employee who then passed it on to an entity outside the FBI,” it said. “However, SecD did not conclusively know how the information was passed to Project Veritas or the press.”
O’Boyle says the FBI retaliated against him for making protected disclosures about the FBI “snitch line” targeting parents who protested at school board meetings.
“I first went to Congress in November of 2021,” he wrote on his “Hold the Line” Substack. “That is two years ago now. Back then, I told Congress that the agency was weaponized against those they have deemed as dissidents; primarily conservatives and Christians.”
In congressional testimony, O’Boyle said the Bureau retaliated against him by revoking his security clearance and suspending him without pay.
“In weaponized fashion, the FBI allowed me to accept orders to a new position halfway across the country. They allowed us to sell my family’s home. They ordered me to report to the new unit when our youngest daughter was only two weeks old. Then, on my first day on the new assignment, they suspended me; rendering my family homeless and refused to release our household goods, including our clothes, for weeks,” O’Boyle told the House Weaponization Committee.
He added: “All I wanted to do was serve my country by stopping bad guys and protecting the innocent. To my chagrin, bad guys have begun running parts of the government making it difficult to continue to serve this Nation and protect the innocent.”
The disclosure said Perkins and FBI supervisor Sean Clark schemed to punish O’Boyle by transferring him across the country, knowing they were going to to suspend him as soon as he got there to financially devastate him.
“Clark bragged to at least one other FBI employee in SecD that he was going to really ‘screw’ O’Boyle,” the whistleblower alleged.
On Substack, O’Boyle divulged that the actual wording was even stronger, according to his source.
“I have it on strong authority that Clark actually bragged, ‘we’re going to f-ck the motherf-cker,'” he wrote.
I think the actual words are important and lend a different, stronger meaning to just how vile these people are. Clark is now retired. He has his security clearance and pension. If people in positions of power take this approach to some type of internal investigation, does anyone think it appropriate that an institution like the FBI even be permitted to investigate crime anymore? I have long said, “it is rotten to the core.” That phrase was included in one of my protected disclosures regarding FBI wrongdoing. Congressmen, including Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan have seized on that phrase. Rightfully so.
O’Boyle told the Times he had never met or knew Clark or Perkins and only learned about them “when The Times shared the information from the whistleblower disclosure with him.”
“I didn’t even know these people, but they came after me anyway because that’s what tyrants do. They come after the people who they’re afraid of,” O’Boyle said. “They come after the people who speak the truth.”
The suspended G-Man has sued the FBI, making his ability to earn a living virtually impossible.
“My attorneys have advised me that if I quit, then the FBI will simply file a motion to dismiss the suit [and] my lawsuit would have no standing,” O’Boyle explained.
His security clearance has been suspended for 14 months, and the FBI won’t let him accept donations or find another job while suspended without pay, he said.
“O’Boyle and his family were left homeless. The FBI had possession of all of Mr. O’Boyle’s and his family’s personal effects, including clothes and furniture,” the disclosure said. “No one in SecD took any steps to assist O’Boyle from the desperate predicament that SecD created. SecD caused O’Boyle, who was still an FBI employee, to be left destitute in a city [where] he had no family or support.”
Mr. O’Boyle told lawmakers in his public testimony, “It has been more than a year since the FBI took my paycheck from me, and we’re getting financially crushed. My family and I have been surviving on early withdrawals from our retirement accounts.”
“The @FBI targeted its 6,000 veteran employees for internal investigations. Why? Because its Security Division believed that veterans are politically conservative. And the FBI views conservatism as domestic terrorism,” wrote former agent Steve Friend on X. “Vile, evil cretins run this agency. Defund the FBI.”