An FBI whistleblower was investigated and later had his security clearance pulled for peddling “extremist propaganda” after he forwarded news articles to supervisors and colleagues from so-called “questionable sources” — including well-known political news and polling aggregator RealClearPolitics.
FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen had his security clearance suspended in January 2022, four months after emailing the “links from questionable sources,” which flagged him as “an insider threat,” according to a Thursday letter from the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight to a congressional committee.
The Sept. 29, 2021, email questioned the accuracy of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony before Congress earlier that year concerning the degree of involvement of the bureau’s confidential human sources at the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
The Post reviewed a portion of the unclassified investigatory file on the former FBI staffer, which shows that the bureau made the determination about RealClear solely based on an analyst’s “open source research” of a ranking provided by the website mediabiasfactcheck.com.
Allen’s email also cited reports that had “originated with The New York Times,” Empower President Tristan Leavitt noted in the letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), that confidential informants were present at the Capitol.
“There is a good possibility the DC elements of our organization are not being forthright about the events of the day or the influence of government assets,” he wrote in the letter to his leadership chain.
Former FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven D’Antuono testified to the Judiciary panel in June 2023 that the bureau actually lost count of the informants — and later had to audit how many were in Washington, DC, to attend the attend a “Stop the Steal” rally thrown by former President Donald Trump.
Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund has also confirmed that the FBI had another 18 undercover agents in the crowd and 20 more agents from the Department of Homeland Security.
But Allen’s internal protected disclosure prompted an investigation by the FBI’s Security Division.
An initial assessment from the bureau’s Insider Threat Office cited the email and Allen’s views on the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters as well as his “comments concerning vaccine hesitancy and hostility toward U.S. government vaccine mandates, open-minded views towards conspiracy theories, and hostile views towards the U.S. government.”
“ALLEN may pose an insider threat to the FBI,” the assessment found.
Later additions to the assessment said Allen’s September 2021 email was the culmination of “a linear pattern of increased hostility, which may ultimately result in a direct influence or manipulation of information that could directly interfere with FBI mission objectives.”
The assessment also said Allen was trying “to persuade co-workers and supervisory agents to reject legal precedents and protocols in favor of extremist propaganda.”
Concerning the RealClearPolitics links, the assessment claimed the popular aggregator “takes legitimate information and adds specific language to spin the opinion of the information more favorably to right-leaning readers” — despite the FBI having used the links in their own Daily News Bulletins earlier the same month.
Even the lead investigator on Allen’s case took issue with the probe of the staff operations specialist — who received awards as a non-commissioned officer in the Marine Corps and deployed to Kuwait and Iraq — being based on the premise that his security clearance should be revoked because he did not profess allegiance to the US.
Still, Leavitt wrote in his letter to Jordan that “Allen’s protected whistleblower disclosure was the sole predication for opening the clearance investigation” and “the central basis” for the suspension of his security clearance on Jan. 10, 2022.
Though based in part on his COVID-19 vaccination status, Allen had his security clearance suspended a little more than a week before a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration’s government-wide vaccine mandate.
Allen regained his security clearance, which had been suspended over concerns about his “allegiance to the United States,” as a part of a settlement with the FBI earlier this year.
After winning full back pay and benefits he had been denied during the investigation, he resigned from the bureau.
In 2019, Allen had been recognized as Employee of the Year for his work on the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office.
Other FBI whistleblowers have alleged that then-Security Division Acting Deputy Assistant Director Jeffrey Veltri was one of several officials that used litmus tests to “purge” political conservatives like Allen from the bureau.
As of Monday, Veltri, now the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Miami Field Office, is also overseeing the investigation into a second assassination attempt against Trump.
His appointment to lead the south Florida office had been delayed in part due to an investigation of his retaliation against FBI whistleblowers, Leavitt’s Thursday letter alleges.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is currently reviewing disclosures from at least four whistleblowers, repped by Empower Oversight, about Veltri’s conduct and FBI abuses of the security clearance process with respect to Allen and others.
“Special Agent in Charge Veltri was selected through a competitive process to lead the Miami field office and is charged with carrying out the FBI mission in a fair and unbiased manner,” the FBI said in a statement. “The reported allegations about political bias impacting decisions, the targeting of former military employees, and SAC Veltri’s social media accounts and posts are demonstrably false.”
“The FBI has full confidence in SAC Veltri’s leadership of the Miami Field Office and the investigation of the attempted assassination of former President Trump,” the bureau added. “This investigation is of the highest priority of the FBI. We are working closely with our partners and have hundreds of personnel from FBI Headquarters, Quantico, and multiple field offices supporting these efforts. All of us in the FBI are committed to conducting this investigation by the book, following the facts where they lead.”
Allen, Leavitt and Horowitz are scheduled to testify Sept. 25 before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government about the array of alleged FBI abuses.
The FBI did not respond to follow-up requests for comment about its characterization of RealClearPolitics.
The site’s publisher, Tom Bevan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
