More whistleblowers have stepped forward to tell Congress that high-ranking FBI officials are targeting agents for their political beliefs and trying to force them out of the bureau, specifically going after former military members.
The Marine Corps and other military veterans at the FBI are being accused of being disloyal to the U.S. because they fit the profile of a supporter of former President Donald Trump, according to two new disclosures sent to lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee.
The Washington Times obtained copies of the disclosures.
The whistleblowers said FBI Security Division Deputy Assistant Director Jeffrey Veltri and Assistant Section Chief Dena Perkins specifically went after bureau employees who served as Marines or in other military branches
They retaliated against the agents by stripping them of security clearance, which sidelines them on the job and pushes them toward the exit, according to the disclosures.
The whistleblower disclosures charge that Mr. Veltri and Ms. Perkins either declared or attempted to declare the Marine and other veterans as “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.
Ms. Perkins and Mr. Veltri also considered not wearing masks, refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccination, and participating in religious activities showed that an employee was a “right-wing radical and disloyal to the United States.”
In another instance, Ms. Perkins attempted to revoke a security clearance of a bureau employee she knew was a Marine veteran, but information showed that the initial allegations against the employee were unfounded, the disclosure says.
This did not stop Ms. Perkins from ordering her investigators to canvass at least 10 police departments where the employee lived to find out if the FBI employee had any allegations lodged against him.
“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.
“An employee advised that at least two of the publicly known FBI whistleblowers were former members of the military, specifically … Kyle Seraphin and Garret O’Boyle,” according to one of the disclosures.
Another FBI whistleblower disclosure sent to the Judiciary Committee included an accusation from a Security Division employee who said the security clearance investigation of Mr. Seraphin did not follow the policy guidelines of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Previously, the FBI disputed earlier whistleblower allegations that its security division went after security clearances of FBI employees who are conservatives.
“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 in a statement to The Times.
Mr. Seraphin was subjected to a security clearance investigation, according to the disclosure, after his field office notified Ms. Perkins that a police officer who was out of his jurisdiction confronted him about practicing with his gun at a shooting range.
Mr. O’Boyle lost his security clearance after he testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s panel that is investigating the weaponization of the federal government. His security clearance was suspended in September 2022 over allegations he had leaked information about a criminal investigation to Project Veritas that FBI officials said “compromised the case.”
Mr. O’Boyle ended up homeless after he lost his security clearance and was suspended without pay, according to the disclosures.
Officials in the FBI’s Security Division, or SecD in bureau lingo, suspended Mr. O’Boyle’s security clearance after he was transferred to a new field office, leaving him and his family in a new city where they became financially stranded and homeless, it said.
The disclosure names the FBI supervisor Sean Clark and Ms. Perkins who were behind the scheme to punish Mr. O’Boyle, allegedly transferring him across the country with the intent to suspend him and financially devastate him.
“Clark bragged to at least one other FBI employee in SecD that he was going to really ‘screw’ O’Boyle,” the disclosure said.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. O’Boyle said he never met or knew Mr. Clark or Ms. Perkins. He said he 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,” Mr. O’Boyle said. They come after the people who speak the truth.”
He has sued the FBI. His security clearance has been suspended for 14 months, and he is forbidden by the FBI to accept donations or find another job while suspended without pay, he said.
“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,” Mr. O’Boyle said.
Mr. Clark and Ms. Perkins likely knew he did not pass the information to Project Veritas or 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.”
Mr. Clark and Ms. Perkins allowed Mr. O’Boyle, who was unaware he was under an internal investigation, to sell his home and move to the other office. He was then suspended immediately upon entering the doors of the new office, it 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 in June he never had an opportunity to defend himself and had only one interview with the bureau, which happened one year earlier after apparent prompting from Congress.
“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,” he told lawmakers.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
