FBI whistleblowers, including one with info on Strzok, want bureau to review their cases

FBI agents who blew the whistle on “wrongdoing” within the bureau — including one agent saying he wants to share further information about working under disgraced FBI official Peter Strzok — are calling upon the bureau, now led by Kash Patel, to review and resolve their claims of retaliation by Biden's FBI.

Empower Oversight sent an early March letter to FBI general counsel Samuel Ramer, asking the bureau for help related to the improper treatment of FBI agents and employees Garret O’Boyle, Marcus Allen, Stephen Friend, Zach Schofftsall, Monica Shillingburg, and Michael Zummer. The letter also includes new details on four clients whose names were redacted, at least one one of whom wants to share FBI abuses from his time working under Strzok, the fired FBI supervisory special agent deeply involved in Crossfire Hurricane.

At least some of the FBI whistleblowers have been locked in a legal battle with the bureau for years, alleging that their security clearances were stripped and their livelihoods threatened by the FBI. But now, with a new FBI chief in charge, the whistleblowers and their lawyers are asking the bureau to give the concerns of their clients a renewed look.

FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen had his security clearance suspended “for questioning whether Director Wray had testified truthfully to Congress and other allegations based on SOS Allen’s political beliefs and concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine,” his lawyers said. Allen, who had been assigned to the FBI’s Charlotte Division, “was suspended indefinitely without pay” as a result of this and other disclosures.

Empower Oversight said that the FBI reached a settlement with Allen, but asserts that it has only mostly — but not fully — lived up to the terms of the agreement. His legal team says the FBI still needs to fix their client's W2 tax forms and still needs to pay him the proper amount of leave owed.

"While I feel vindicated now in getting back my security clearance, it is sad that in the country I fought for as a Marine, the FBI was allowed to lie about my loyalty to the U.S. for two years," Allen said. "Unless there is accountability, it will keep happening to others. Better oversight and changes to security clearance laws are key to stop abuses suffered by whistleblowers like me."

Asking for a "fresh review"

“The actions taken against our clients were in reprisal for protected whistleblowing and/or improper targeting because of their political beliefs,” Jason Foster, the chair and founder of Empower Oversight, argued in the letter to the bureau. “The common theme among most of our clients who had their security clearances suspended and or revoked is the FBI's ability to indefinitely delay the process and financially pressure FBI employees by suspending their pay and blocking their ability to earn a living any other way. Most facing that dilemma simply resign with no prospect of a fair process to challenge it, which allows the pattern to repeat without remedy.”

The lawyers for the FBI agents asked for a fresh review of the cases of their clients, saying that “if the review by your office alone does not lead to direct managerial action to remedy the harms and resolve our clients’ pending matters, we would be willing to propose to our clients that they enter into mediation facilitated by a neutral mediator — assuming an acceptable senior official with no animus toward our clients is delegated settlement authority to represent the FBI in the mediation.”

Empower Oversight added in the early March letter that “while we appreciate your review of these cases to explore ways to amicably resolve and remedy the harms the FBI has inflicted on our clients, we are also willing to engage in other good faith efforts to reach the same goals.”

"A lot of our work has to remain confidential because some clients do not wish to become public figures. Sometimes though, it takes public scrutiny to move the needle," Foster told Just the News. "These FBI clients have waited a very long time on a system that, as of today, is still failing to keep its promises to protect whistleblowers from retaliation. It’s past time to make good on those promises and give them real meaning in these cases."

The FBI declined to comment for this story.

Ending weaponization

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on inauguration day calling for “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi then announced the creation of the “Weaponization Working Group” at the start of her tenure in February, saying the group “will conduct a review of the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States over the last four years… to identify instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”

Bondi specifically stated that the new working group will examine… retaliatory targeting, and in some instances criminal prosecution, of legitimate whistle blowers.”

The lawyers for the whistleblowers said in their March letter to the FBI that “we request the opportunity to engage a representative of the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group.” Foster tweeted on Friday that he was "happy to report we have now been contacted by Attorney General Pam Bondi's Weaponization Working Group about these cases."

Empower Oversight also included in the early March letter summaries of all ten clients, telling the bureau that “we are providing these summaries based on assurances that they will be reviewed for potential action only by objective senior officials with no prior involvement in these cases.”

Swalwell, China, Strzok, and Crossfire Hurricane

The yet-unnamed FBI agent who wants to share information about Strzok served in the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division for thirteen years, his lawyers said, and he “primarily focused on China and was active in collaborating with other China experts” in the nation’s capital.

Despite the redactions, from the context of Empower Oversight’s letter it appears that part of this particular FBI agent’s grievance relates to the FBI allegedly improperly suspending his security clearance following the publishing of a story in Axios in 2020 story revealing that Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell had been targeted by and had a relationship with Christine Fang.

The Chinese national was active in the Bay Area and elsewhere in the United States for years and built connections and relationships with numerous politicians including Swalwell. According to Axios, she is believed to have been working at the direction of China’s main civilian spy agency — the Ministry of State Security.

Empower Oversight's lawyers for the FBI agent stress that he did not provide sensitive information or case information on Swalwell to the reporter, but he was indefinitely suspended without pay anyway.

“[REDACTED] met various experts on China at functions in the Washington, DC area. Through that collaboration, he met a reporter. He initially reported his contact with the reporter to his supervisor. His supervisor told him that he did not need to report the contact in writing. At first, he used his FBI email account to communicate with her, so his communications were transparent to the FBI. He began using his personal email account as the relationship became more social,” Empower Oversight wrote. “Unfortunately, the same reporter later broke the story about the FBI investigating Congressman Eric Swalwell. Although [REDACTED] did not provide any sensitive FBI information, let alone any Swalwell case information, to the reporter, his security clearance was suspended, resulting in his immediate, indefinite suspension without pay.”

Feinstein, Swalwell given "defensive briefings"

The 2020 Axios story on Swalwell added that “amid a widening counterintelligence probe, federal investigators became so alarmed by Fang's behavior and activities that around 2015 they alerted Swalwell to their concerns — giving him what is known as a defensive briefing.” The defensive briefing alerted Swalwell to Fang’s Chinese intelligence links.

“Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years — to the FBI,” Swalwell’s office said in 2020. “To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story.”

The FBI had similarly provided then-Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who passed away in 2023, with a defensive briefing after alerting her to the fact that one of her staffers, Russell Lowe, was likely connected to Chinese intelligence.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2018 that “a staffer” in Feinstein’s San Francisco office “was fired a few years back after being linked to Chinese spying in the Bay Area.” Politico also revealed that year that the Feinstein staffer had been reporting back to China’s Ministry of State Security.

“The FBI told me 5 years ago it had concerns that China was seeking to recruit an administrative member of my Calif staff (despite no access to sensitive information),” Feinstein said on Twitter in 2018. “I took those concerns seriously, learned the facts, and made sure the employee left my office immediately.”

Republicans have long pointed to a double standard in how FBI defensive briefings were used in high-profile cases involving political figures — a defensive briefing given to then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016 was actually a pretextual briefing which the FBI exploited to advance its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign, whereas defensive briefings given to Swalwell and Feinstein about their close ties to suspected Chinese agents effectively ended the FBI’s criminal or counterintelligence investigations.

Congressman Devin Nunes, a California Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time, told Fox News in 2018 that “providing a defensive briefing, like the one given to Senator Feinstein, is a typical response to these kinds of situations” and that “the refusal to give the Trump campaign a defensive briefing, and instead opening a sprawling counter-intelligence investigation of American citizens, is one of many alarming ways that intelligence leaders drastically diverged from normal procedures in their Trump campaign investigation.”

House Intelligence Committee Republicans responded to the Fang revelations in 2020 by calling upon then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another California Democrat, to remove Swalwell from the sensitive congressional committee, saying that “his close interactions with Chinese intelligence services, however unintentional they may be, are an unacceptable national security risk.”

The FBI’s first intelligence briefing of then-candidate Trump in August 2016 at its New York field office was used as a “pretext” to gather evidence on him and on then-foreign policy adviser Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, according to 2019 testimony from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

“They sent a supervisory agent to the briefing from the Crossfire Hurricane team, and that agent prepared a report to the file of the briefing about what Mr. Trump and Mr. Flynn said,” Horowitz testified. “So the agent was actually doing the briefing but also using it for the purpose of investigation.”

Pushing the Steele Dossier

That FBI agent was Joseph Pientka, who would later accompany Peter Strzok to interview Flynn in January 2017. Pientka detailed the briefing on August 30, 2016, and the electronic communication was approved by Strzok and Kevin Clinesmith, the ex-FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to editing a FISA filing fraudulently to state Trump campaign associate Carter Page was “not a source” for the CIA.

The same briefing given by then-FBI Director James Comey to Trump on the infamous Steele Dossier in January 2017 was also used to advance the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane inquiry, according to the DOJ's Horowitz in 2019.

The meeting between Trump, Comey, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and then-NSA Director Mike Rogers occurred on Jan. 6, 2017, and was leaked to the press. Its main topic was supposed to be the intelligence community assessment on Russian meddling.

Horowitz’s 2019 report on Comey’s mishandling of his memos also showed Comey’s one-on-one with Trump was treated as a chance to gather information for the Trump-Russia investigation, and the first so-called “Comey Memo” was written that day.

Empower Oversight also wrote in the March letter to the FBI that their unnamed client’s personal email account was searched during the criminal investigation of the Swalwell leak, “which would have disclosed his conservative political beliefs to investigators.”

The agent’s lawyers also wrote that, at the time he was suspended, their client was also one of the few FBI counterintelligence agents who had not attested to taking the COVID-19 vaccine, with Empower Oversight saying they believed that “SecD officials were improperly using non-compliance with vaccine requirements as a factor in deciding to suspend an employee’s clearance.”

Seeking reinstatement, and willing to talk about Strzok

The FBI agent “resigned from the FBI to take another job because of the severe financial distress of being suspended without pay and the unlikely prospect of any timely resolution” but  “despite his suspended clearance, FBI agents recently asked him to meet with him about prior work of his, and he was temporarily authorized to access that classified information.”

Empower Oversight said that their client “seeks reinstatement of his security clearance to enable potential re-employment with the FBI given its need for his significant experience and expertise within the FBI Counterintelligence Division on issues related to China.”

The lawyers said the FBI agent “would also like to make additional protected disclosures to the Weaponization Working Group about various abuses he observed, including while working under Peter Strzok” — who played a key role in the FBI’s Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 report concluded that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” The special counsel noted that “the FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during, or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.”

Chain of "reprisal" firings

Three other FBI agents represented by Empower Oversight also contended they had been retaliated against over disclosures they had made variously related to the FBI’s handling of investigations into the Patriot Front, changes to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), and allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

FBI supervisory special agent Zachery Schofftsall, who previously served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq and elsewhere, says he was removed from his bureau position related to an investigation tying him to the Patriot Front according to his lawyers. FBI documents have described the Patriot Front as a “far right” and “white supremacist” group.

The agents were aware of previous FBI investigations indicating that Patriot Front members were non-violent, and SSA Schoffstall’s agents objected to signing an affidavit that excluded that exculpatory information from the affidavit, according to Oversight who also said that “DOJ’s efforts to investigate Patriot Front appeared to be politically motivated. When the agents could not swear to the affidavit because of their knowledge, FBI executives told SSA Schoffstall to assign an agent who was not aware of the exculpatory information so that they could sign the affidavit. SSA Schoffstall declined to do so or pressure his investigating agents to attest to the affidavit because he believed it would be part of an effort to mislead the court.”

The lawyers wrote that Schofftstall “was subsequently removed from his position, temporarily reassigned to West Virginia, was subjected to an unsuccessful [loss of effectiveness] request, an unsuccessful attempt to place him on a [performance improvement plan], and finally investigated by [the Inspection Division], and in August 2024 was proposed for removal from the FBI.”

Empower Oversight said that these actions violated the law “because they were in reprisal for his disclosures of DOJ misconduct to his executive management, DOJ OIG, and Congress.”

Another client, FBI Unit Chief Monica Shillingburg, served in the FBI’s NICS beginning in 1997 “until she was reassigned in reprisal for making protected disclosures as a whistleblower,” the lawyers wrote, noting she “was one of the most knowledgeable managers of NICS” within the bureau. She says "she was particularly concerned" about episodes of "gross mismanagement and a gross waste of funds." 

Another Oversight client, special agent Michael Zummer — who previously did a tour in Iraq for the Marine Corps — investigated white-collar crime and public corruption while he was part of the FBI’s New Orleans Division. His whistleblower disclosures related to district attorneys and assistant district attorneys who allegedly had serious conflicts of interest.

The details provided by Oversight say that “SA Zummer investigated an elected district attorney, who used the power of his office to have oral sex with five women, sexually battered eight, and asked nine for sexual favors. SA Zummer observed that New Orleans AUSAs had conflicts of interest stemming from the first AUSA owning property with the DA’s defense attorney and from his reporting that conflict of interest and other misconduct to the OIG.” Zummer's lawyers also said the AUSAs’ conflicts resulted in a questionable plea agreement. 

Zummer asked for permission to notify the presiding judge of the “prosecutorial misconduct” favoring the district attorney and, when none was given, submitted a draft letter for prepublication review. Empower Oversight said that “when the FBI unlawfully refused to review the letter, he sent it to the court” and, even though it contained no classified information, the FBI “suspended and later revoked his security clearance for sending the letter to the court.”

Empower Oversight added that since-fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe “was briefed on the matter via email and, ostensibly, tacitly approved the retaliatory action against SA Zummer.” 

Just the News reached out to McCabe through his LinkedIn account but did not receive a response.

Three other unnamed FBI agents are also seeking redress from the bureau. Empower Oversight said that one unnamed agent, who primarily supported covert operations, was punished related to his viewing the January 6 Capitol Riot in person. The agent’s lawyers said that their client “self-reported that he had been at the Capitol.” Around that time, their client also “expressed hesitance about the COVID vaccine.” It was then that the FBI suspended his clearance and suspended him from duty without pay, and he was eventually forced to retire early from the bureau.

The agent’s lawyers called this retaliation “particularly egregious given the President's decision to pardon and commute the sentences of January 6th rioters who violently attacked police and destroyed property inside the Capitol.” Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 defendants tied to January 6th — including hundreds charged with assaulting police — on his first day in office.

Two other unnamed FBI agents represented by Empower Oversight also made whistleblower disclosures related to alleged verbal abuse and reprisals for perceived political leanings by the FBI Security Division’s then-acting Deputy Assistant Director Jeffrey Veltri and then-acting Security Chief Dena Perkins.

The first unnamed agent observed that Perkins and Veltri “routinely abused their authority in the security clearance process, including the targeting of employees for their political beliefs and other improper purposes.” The unnamed agent disclosed to his superiors in October 2022 that Veltri “became emotional during a brief disclosing text messages on January 6, 2021, between an FBI supervisor, who was not at the U.S. Capitol that day, and one of his employees who was there that day.” Veltri allegedly ranted at the agent because he believed the supervisor’s clearance should “clearly” be revoked over the text messages.

The supervisor’s clearance was ultimately not revoked, Empower Oversight wrote, but Veltri and Perkins began “retaliating” against their client “through verbal abuse and other actions, creating a hostile work environment” for their client. Later, Perkins allegedly “manipulated the facts of the case to justify the clearance actions” and “entered a negative performance check-in” for their client, who was eventually “forced to leave” their position at the bureau.

“These law enforcement agencies are out of control, drunk on power and blinded by political infection,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in February related to the disclosures against Perkins and Veltri. “It’s time to force them to recognize they answer to Congress and We the People. And those who retaliated against whistleblowers should be fired.” Both Veltri and Perkins were forced out of the bureau by the Trump administration in recent weeks.

Veltri and Perkins both reported to then-FBI executive assistant director Jennifer Leigh Moore, who denied under oath before a House committee in 2023 that the FBI ever wielded security clearance suspensions as a punishment against whistleblowers. “The FBI does not use a suspension as a punitive measure ever,” Moore said. She added that “I’m the executive assistant director charged for the organization of signing those. We absolutely do not use suspension of a security clearance in a punitive measure ever against an employee. It is only utilized in national security matters.”

Veltri did not respond to a request for comment, and Just the News was unable to reach Perkins directly.

Some of the whistleblowers testified before Congress

FBI special agent Steve Friend, FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen, and FBI special agent O’Boyle are all represented by Empower Oversight, and the trio testified before the GOP-led Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in 2023. All three also want resolution from the bureau.

Just the News recently published an extensive report on O’Boyle, whose lawyers say he was punished after he shone a light on the DOJ and FBI allegedly putting protesting parents in the crosshairs, inflating the domestic terrorism threat, targeting pro-lifers, and other politically-motivated investigations. House Democrats had unleashed a torrent of attacks on the whistleblowers before, during, and after the 2023 hearing — including attempting to accuse O’Boyle of lying to Congress, which Just the News previously debunked.

“For Congress to perform its Constitutional duty of oversight of the Executive Branch, it must have firsthand, unvarnished information about how federal agencies are operating,” Tristan Leavitt, the president of Empower Oversight, testified during that hearing. “But why would future whistleblowers bring their disclosures to Congress if they think they might be treated the way some on this Committee have treated these whistleblowers? Attacking whistleblowers hurts this Committee and others like it, the House of Representatives as an institution, and Congress as a whole.”

Empower Oversight said Friend “sought reasonable accommodations for religious reasons to avoid the COVID vaccine mandate” and that “he complied to the best of his ability with testing requirements, although on one occasion, he was unofficially reprimanded on that issue.” Friend was “forced to resign” from the bureau, his lawyers said, because he was “suffering under this extreme financial duress.”

Grassley: "Right the ship"

Grassley sent his own letter about unnamed FBI whistleblowers to Bondi and Patel last week.

The Iowa senator called upon the leaders to “personally review the adverse personnel matters for these individuals… and take all appropriate corrective actions, including restoring their security clearances and employment and firing or otherwise disciplining those who retaliated against them, if warranted.”

“The Biden administration’s political weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI has caused significant damage to these institutions and its employees, but you’re in the position to right the ship,” Grassley wrote in the letter.

Foster told Just the News that "without action, the laws promising to protect whistleblowers become nothing but hollow, meaningless words, and when that trust is broken, good luck finding anyone else to stick their neck out to report wrongdoing in the future."

It was announced earlier this month that two IRS whistleblowers who shed light on failures to properly investigate Hunter Biden — and who were retaliated against by their Biden-era superiors as a result — were given promotions by the new Trump-led Treasury Department.

It remains to be seen whether the FBI whistleblowers will receive similar redemption from the bureau, and if any new facts about Strzok emerge as a result.