WASHINGTON – Yesterday Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz independently corroborated key whistleblower disclosures Empower Oversight made to Congress last week. The new revelations came in a statement for the record Horowitz submitted to the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government for its hearing yesterday with Horowitz, FBI whistleblower and Empower Oversight client Marcus Allen, and Empower Oversight president Tristan Leavitt.
Horowitz confirmed yesterday that DOJ OIG has an open investigation into the disclosure Empower Oversight made this summer of “highly inappropriate questions being asked of witnesses during security clearance investigations.” His statement for the record also confirmed several whistleblower allegations Empower Oversight included in a 22-page disclosure to Chairman Jim Jordan last week:
- A Security Division management official (Dena Perkins) requested an Insider Threat assessment of Mr. Allen after discussing with a Charlotte FBI management official (1) Mr. Allen’s September 29, 2021 protected whistleblower disclosure emails and (2) Mr. Allen’s COVID-19 vaccination status.
- The FBI’s Insider Threat Office concluded Mr. Allen “may pose” an insider threat to the FBI in part because of messages “in which Mr. Allen expressed hesitation about the COVID-19 vaccine.”
- An FBI report prior to the suspension of Mr. Allen’s security clearance “concluded there was ‘no information validating’ the security predicate SecD used to open the investigation of Mr. Allen.”
- The first investigator into Mr. Allen’s case “concluded Mr. Allen had arguably made a protected [whistleblower] disclosure in his September 29 emails.” But when the investigator was directed to draft a suspension memo on Mr. Allen’s clearance anyway, edits his supervisors made to the memo “‘grossly mischaracterized’ Mr. Allen’s communications.”
- “About two weeks after the Allen suspension notice was issued, [the first investigator] was reassigned from his position and removed from the Allen investigation[.]”
- “In January 2023, the assigned SecD adjudicator sent a memorandum to his supervisor raising concerns about the strength of the evidence gathered during the Allen investigation.”
- When Mr. Allen’s immediate Charlotte Field Office supervisor was interviewed for a second time eight months after Mr. Allen’s clearance was suspended, “the supervisor stated that at some point he instructed Mr. Allen to stop sending emails ‘from different sources regarding January 6th’ and to focus on ‘actual news sites.’ However, this statement was not consistent with the supervisor’s initial SecD interview or the statements of other Charlotte [Field Office] management officials, all of whom told Investigator 1 that Mr. Allen had never been counseled or told to stop sending links to ‘alternative’ open source information prior to the September 29 emails.” This contradictory claim was used as a significant basis for the recommendation in May 2023 to revoke Mr. Allen’s clearance, but “[t]he revocation memorandum did not address the initial interviews of Charlotte [Field Office] management which indicated that Mr. Allen had not been previously admonished for sending such emails.”
- “[F]ollowing [a] presentation to SecD management, [a SecD adjudicator] submitted a draft reinstatement memorandum to SecD management recommending that Mr. Allen’s security clearance be reinstated. The following month, in April 2024, [the adjudicator] was reassigned from her position in the adjudication division and taken off of the Allen case.”
Following the hearing, Empower Oversight submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the DOJ OIG for all of its records into Mr. Allen’s whistleblower retaliation complaint, as well as any DOJ OIG records containing disciplinary recommendations for the FBI from its investigation.
For Horowitz’s full statement for the record, click here.
For the full FOIA request, click here.