FBI revokes employee’s clearance after investigating his support for Trump and views on COVID-19

A recently released complaint to the Justice Department’s Inspector General alleges that the FBI questioned colleagues about an associate’s support for Donald Trump and his plans to attend the Capitol protests on January 6, 2021. Pictured: Attorney General Merrick Garland, accompanied by FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaks at a meeting at the Justice Department on May 13, 2024 in Washington, DC (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The FBI has revoked an employee’s security clearance after he questioned colleagues about his support for former President Donald Trump and his views on the COVID-19 vaccine – under threat of disciplinary action – according to a complaint filed with the Justice Department’s internal oversight agency.

The employee attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington before it degenerated into a riot and reported his presence to the FBI the next day, according to whistleblower advocacy group Empower Oversight, which filed a complaint to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on June 8 in a letter released Monday evening, with the client’s name redacted.

The complaint comes shortly after the FBI reinstated the security clearance of whistleblower Marcus Allen, a former FBI staff operations specialist, following allegations of politicized retaliation.

The employee, who has worked there for 12 years, also voluntarily took a lie detector test from the FBI. The Office of the Inspector General found “no deception” when he stated that he had not entered the Capitol or a restricted area.

In March 2022, then-FBI Deputy Director Jennifer Leigh Moore suspended the employee’s security clearance and indefinitely suspended him without pay. The employee then made confidential statements to the House Judiciary Committee alleging that the security clearance process had been politicized.

“The FBI’s Security Division (“SecD”) improperly conducted a comprehensive investigation into our client’s political views, questioning other First Amendment-protected activities and commitment to the Second Amendment while she was off duty,” said Tristan Leavitt, president of Empowerment Oversight, in the complaint’s cover letter to Horowitiz, the inspector general.

Empower Oversight obtained the investigative files from the FBI. Leavitt said the “shocking documents” showed the FBI’s “political bias and abuse of the FBI Security Division’s security clearance process to purge the FBI of employees who expressed unwelcome political views or concerns about the COVID-19 vaccination requirement.”

The FBI sent the former employee’s colleagues a questionnaire with questions such as “expressed his support for President Trump,” “expressed objections to the Covid-19 vaccination,” and “expressed his intention to attend on January 6, 2021.”

“Instead of limiting its investigation to legitimate questions, SecD (the FBI’s security division) acted as if supporting President Trump, refusing COVID-19 vaccinations, or lawfully participating in a protest was tantamount to membership in al-Qaeda or the Chinese Communist Party,” Empower Oversight’s complaint to the inspector general states. “The FBI’s intentions are made clear by the questions it had written in black and white on a government document.”

Whistleblowers and former FBI agents have uncovered stories of the FBI targeting pro-life protesters, developing a “threat list” to monitor parents who speak out at school board meetings, and relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization that brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as “hate groups” and puts them on par with the Ku Klux Klan.

The FBI’s Richmond office cited the SPLC in a memo last January about its intention to monitor “radical traditional Catholics” before the national office officially retracted the memo. The Justice Department consulted with the SPLC when it released a “hate” report in 2023.

According to documents obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, FBI agents worked about 16,000 more hours during the pay period following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots than they did during the pay period of the 2020 riots in Washington, DC

The Daily Signal has reached out to the FBI for comment and will update this story accordingly.