FBI officials who perform a top secret security clearance The review of a longtime employee asked witnesses if that employee was known to support former President Donald Trump, had expressed concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine, or had attended a rally for the Second Amendment, according to internal memos that prompted a complaint to the Justice Department. internal surveillance alleging political bias within the office.
The employee's security clearance was revoked months after the interviews, which confirmed his support for Trump and gun rights and his concerns about the COVID vaccine, according to documents obtained by Just the news.
The memos show that FBI agents Security Division He asked at least three witnesses in the spring of 2022 whether the employee, whose name and position were redacted from the memos, was known to have “voiced support for President Trump” or “voiced objections to vaccination against Covid-19”. The agents verified from at least one witness that the worker had, in fact, refused to receive the coronavirus inoculation.
These last questions about the vaccine were asked in the spring of 2022, a few months later The US Supreme Court had struck down vaccine mandates in corporate jobs and a separate one the federal court had issued an injunction on vaccination mandates for federal employees.
The agents also asked witnesses if the FBI worker had “attended the Richmond Lobby Day event” in January 2021, a rally for supporters of the Second Amendment in Virginia. Officers' notes referred to the fellow they were investigating as a “gun song” but did not engage in “any promotion of violence.”
You can read the notes here:
FBI officials declined to comment on why an employee's support for Trump and the Second Amendment or his reluctance to get the COVID-19 vaccine was relevant to his security clearance.
They also declined to answer similar questions about support for Joe Biden or other medical issues, such as a woman's support for abortion.
In a letter to the DOJ inspector general, FBI employee Tristan Leavitt's attorney revealed that his client made whistleblower-protected statements to both Congress and the DOJ about the politicization of the investigation process. 'security clearance, which he alleged was submitted simply because he self-reported taking a vacation day to go to Washington DC for the January 6, 2021, rally.
Leavitt, who runs the nonprofit Empower Oversight Center, which specializes in whistleblower cases, said his client did not engage in any criminal acts or enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and called to the security review process that led to evidence of political bias. against conservatives in office.
“Instead of limiting their investigation to legitimate issues, the SecD (Security Division) acted as if supporting President Trump, opposing COVID-19 vaccinations, or lawfully attending a protest were tantamount to to be a member of Al Qaeda or the Chinese Communist Party,” Leavitt wrote to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a letter Monday calling for an investigation.
“The FBI's intentions are clear from the questions it decided to put in black and white in a government document,” added Leavitt, whose group has represented IRS whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden case, as like several FBI agents and analysts who claim their security clearances were suspended or revoked because of their political views.
One such FBI employee, intelligence analyst Marcus Allen, was claimed last week when the office restored his clearance and paid him more than two years of back pay, according to CNN.
Leavitt told Horowitz that he believed the documents detailing his client's security clearance review were “shocking” evidence of an “abuse of authority and a violation of our client's First Amendment rights.”
Horowitz's office, which has chronicled years of FBI abuses ranging from the mishandling of informants to abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, did not immediately return calls a call or email seeking comment Monday on whether it has opened an investigation.
You can read this letter here:
If the inspector general opens an investigation, it could help the public and Congress determine whether the FBI's questions about Trump were more widespread than the employee who went to Washington on January 6, 2021, or whether there other questions about political preferences and medical treatments. asked during traditional security clearance reviews.
two sources told Just the News that there is evidence that information was gathered during FBI security clearance reviews about the political views of other employees, suggesting the practice was not isolated.
Meanwhile, the memos provided unprecedented detail about how the security clearance review was conducted for Leavitt's client. Prepared questions were written on a form for the officers to ask, while the witnesses' answers were then recorded by the officers by hand.
The handwritten observations provide significant insight into what the agents believed was relevant to the recommendation of whether the FBI employee should retain his clearance.
The employee “had right-wing views, nothing extreme,” the agent wrote in an interview that asked him about his support for Trump. In another notation, agents wrote that the employee was “defensive Trump supporter, strong Republican values.”
In a third interview, the agent again noted the worker's support for Trump, writing: “Received very significantly, would listen to talk shows. Trump didn't lose. The Dems stole it. Militant point of view. Never involved would do anything aggressive/physical.”
Regarding vaccinations, the officers clearly obtained a witness to confirm that the employee had not been vaccinated, but was following office rules for unvaccinated employees.
“Very much against masks and vaccines. Not vaccinated,” the agent wrote in an interview. “Not vaccinated and tried not to wear a mask.”
The agent noted that the employee was “connected to FBI anti-vaccination groups” but had not made “any anti-FBI rhetoric.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the government's COVID responsehe recently told Congress he didn't think he'd seen any studies showing that masks were effective at stopping the spread of the virus before mask mandates were imposed, and the science since then remains murky.
“I think that there are also many contradictory studies, that there are those that say yes, there is an impact, and there are those that say no. I still think that's up in the air,” he told Congress.
Fauci said so too News from New York last year believed in the final analysis that vaccine mandates were ineffective or counterproductive for Americans.
“I think, almost paradoxically, you had people waiting to get vaccinated thinking, why am I being forced to do this?” Fauci said. “And that sometimes beautiful independent streak in our country backfires.”
When the FBI asked about workers' views on the vaccine in April 2022, the US Supreme Court had already struck down corporate workplace vaccine mandates three months earlier, and the US District Court for in South Texas had issued an injunction against a federal employee vaccine. mandate
The Biden administration appealed the latter case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and was granted review by the Supreme Court. governed that the judgment should be vacated and the case remanded with instructions to direct the District Court to vacate as moot its order granting a preliminary injunction.
According to the employee's Second Amendment claims, the FBI agents used loose language to describe the witnesses' responses. “Gun nou, he went to all the Second Amendment meetings,” the agent wrote in a summary of an interview. “…Does not promote violence.”
Leavitt wrote to the IG that he believed the FBI's conduct in reviewing his client's security clearance violated the Constitution and Supreme Court cases related to employment law and the First Amendment.
“The Supreme Court held that firing public employees for purposes of political patronage, who belong to the wrong political party, 'to the extent that it compels or restricts belief and association, is contrary to the process that underpins our system of government. and is at war with the deepest” traditions of democracy embodied in the First Amendment,” he wrote,
Leavitt added, “Revoking a security clearance for being close to those who did so or simply sharing similar political views as others who acted illegally is pure guilt by association.”
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