🚨 One thing that didn't receive much attention in connection with yesterday's @Weaponization hearing is that @JusticeOIG Michael Horowitz released several new pieces of information corroborating what @EMPOWR_us has previously disclosed to @Jim_Jordan and @JudiciaryGOP. (You can find a list of some here: .)

Based on that new info, below are the top questions I would have asked IG Horowitz at yesterday's hearing if it were me... 🧵

https://x.com/EMPOWR_us/status/1839390485934166214

➡️ Mr. Allen wrote to a coworker of the COVID-19 vaccine that he was "waiting until the opening rounds are finished and more data is available." But as you noted in your statement to the Committee, Mr. Allen's "hesitation about taking the COVID-19 vaccine" meant to the FBI's Insider Threat Office that Mr. Allen "may pose" an "insider threat" to the FBI. You found that focus on vaccination status played a role in suspending Mr. Allen's clearance, but many other employees whose security clearances were suspended by the FBI also expressed reservations about the COVID-19 vaccine, and the questionnaire asking FBI employees to rat out coworkers' views on the vaccine comes from another case than Mr. Allen's altogether.

❓ What kind of atmosphere existed in the FBI's Insider Threat Office such that "vaccine hesitancy" was viewed as making an FBI employee a possible "insider threat"?
❓ Have you examined how many other Insider Threat assessments referenced views on the COVID-19 vaccine? If not, why not?
❓ What kind of atmosphere existed in the FBI's Security Division such that vaccine views were taken into account when making security clearance decisions?
❓ Have you examined how many other security clearance suspension or revocation memos referenced views on the COVID-19 vaccine? If not, why not?

🚨 This afternoon I transmitted a 22-page letter to @Jim_Jordan putting the lie to the FBI's claim that "[t]he FBI has not and will not retaliate against individuals who make protected whistleblower disclosures."

As our press release on the letter outlines, one of the key retaliators pushing the politicization of the FBI was Jeffrey Veltri, now SAC of the FBI's Miami Field Office and running the investigation into the second Trump assassination attempt: .

Highlight thread of the letter below... 🧵

https://x.com/EMPOWR_us/status/1836903079100260536

Not only did Veltri improperly politicize the FBI's Security Division, we've now learned he was under investigation for retaliating against whistleblowers who objected to his heavy-handed tactics and disregard of the law surrounding security clearance adjudications.

This investigation delayed his appointment as the Miami SAC.

These issues will be the subject of hearing next Wednesday @JusticeOIG Michael Horowitz will testify at along with me and FBI whistleblower Marcus Allen.

This article details some of the whistleblower disclosures our client made about the political bias of FBI official Jeffrey Veltri, who is now the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Miami Field Office and spoke at today's press conference. nypost.com/2024/07/02/us-…

https://twitter.com/tristanleavitt/status/1835451345744376261

🧵 From our 7/2/24 complaint to @JusticeOIG:

Another fantastic @nypost column from @MirandaDevine. 🔥🔥🔥

“The nation owes the two whistleblowers an enormous debt of gratitude.” ❤️🇺🇸

🧵 @US_OSC is proposing a new process by which it will make disclosure referrals and retaliation findings public with the consent of the whistleblower, which is an excellent proposal.

But something OSC should do immediately is to stop requesting that the whistleblower keep disclosure referrals confidential.

Why should a whistleblower refrain from publicizing the referral of their own whistleblower disclosure, regardless of whether OSC chooses to?

govexec.com/management/202… By using the very broad phrase "information...related to this matter," OSC's restraining language could even be misconstrued to constrain their communications about even the underlying information, and not just the fact of OSC's referral.

In other words, it could suggest to a whistleblower that they shouldn't make further protected disclosures--even to entities like Congress.

🚨🧵 @EMPOWR_us has confirmed from whistleblowers that @TulsiGabbard was under Quiet Skies surveillance on not just one, or two, or even three flights... She has had Air Marshals there to monitor her on EIGHT FLIGHTS since her July 23 interview with @IngrahamAngle.

Furthermore, TSA is mobilizing a retaliatory investigation into who made these protected whistleblower disclosures. I wrote to @DHSOIG this morning asking him to ensure these whistleblowers are protected. Our letter to IG Cuffari highlights that just because TSA considers some information "Sensitive Security Information," or SSI, does not trump the Whistleblower Protection Act.

The Supreme Court considered this exact issue in 2015 in DHS v. @rjmaclean. MacLean made disclosures to the media of information he reasonably believed was a "substantial and specific danger to public health or safety." TSA argued its regs on SSI prohibited the disclosures, but the Supreme Court ruled the whistleblower protections Congress established in law took priority over TSA regs. If an agency could simply erase statutory whistleblower protections by creating its own rules or regulations to circumvent them, every agency would do that.

Highlight 🧵 for our latest letter at @EMPOWR_us about the Air Marshals' improper surveillance of Americans, including @TulsiGabbard. ⬇️

https://twitter.com/tracybeanz/status/1820931851088736568

Back in 2021 and 2022, @EMPOWR_us helped a Federal Air Marshal disclosure to the DHS Inspector General that that TSA was improperly targeting Americans for surveillance.

Because the Air Marshal's wife was falsely accused of being at the Capitol on J6, she was placed on a watchlist and given surveillance and additional screening when she flew.

🚨 NEW EMPOWER OVERSIGHT RELEASE
FBI Director Christopher Wray is testifying before @JudiciaryGOP tomorrow. Members will rightly want to ask the countless questions about the FBI's investigation into the attempted assassination. But the FBI also needs to be held accountable for targeting @GOBactual for something they know he didn't do.
empowr.us/ahead-of-wray-… It started with this May 2022 video. In it, @JamesOKeefeIII interviews a masked FBI agent who disclosed facts showing DOJ misled the public in its court filings claiming it didn’t view @Project_Veritas
as a media organization.

Watch the @GOPoversight hearing right now here. oversight.house.gov/hearing/oversi… Comer: This tragedy was preventable…USSS has a zero-fail mission—but it failed.

🧭 Here’s the thing:

If Kim Cheatle’s goose wasn’t cooked the moment a would-be assassin came within centimeters of killing former President Trump…

Or once the Secret Service put out a statement like this was just a “crisis averted” instead of their biggest protective failure since 1981…

It most DEFINITELY was cooked as soon as she approved the Secret Service’s spokesman putting out a tweet like the one below.

Here’s why. 🧵 Anyone familiar with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) would not be surprised AT ALL by the allegation that Trump’s security detail requested additional resources. Site agents often ask for more resources and are told to make do with what they have. (I’ll post more about that tomorrow in advance of the Cheatle hearing.)

So the USSS spokesman denying so strongly what was almost inevitably bound to have at least SOME truth to it—and to have multiple people who could attest to that truth—was a pretty big crisis communications strategic failure. 🧨

🧵 As the Kim Cheatle resignation countdown continues (not if, but when), here are some important things to keep in mind about the future of the Secret Service, which has one of the most important missions in the entire federal government. Every country requires the ability to protect its head of state from assassination—especially countries with democratic elections, where candidates vie to serve as head of state.

All countries have a security force to perform this function, and ours is the U.S. Secret Service (USSS). The one mission we cannot allow them to fail at is keeping the current, former, and future presidents safe.

8 years ago @MHowellTweets and I wrote a 200-page report for @GOPoversight that covered in detail several Secret Service security failures, such as how USSS allowed an armed guard on an elevator with President Obama who had a criminal history of three arrests with misdemeanors—including shooting at and hitting a fleeing vehicle with a 3-year-old in the backseat.

As bad as those and other details were, they were just symptoms of a much larger breakdown in the USSS. Clearly their leadership hasn’t learned its lessons, and a massive overhaul is still needed.

https://twitter.com/gopoversight/status/672279357365157889

🚨🚨 Today I sent this letter to Congress alerting them to a new FBI whistleblower @EMPOWR_us is representing—a registered Democrat who served as a supervisor in the FBI’s Security Division—who further substantiates the concerns we’ve had for two years: the FBI was using security clearance suspensions and revocations as a tool to push (usually conservative) employees out of the FBI, regardless of the facts. empowr.us/wp-content/upl… The new whistleblower, who is choosing to remain anonymous to the public (the FBI knows exactly who he is), confirms that SecD routinely asked employees about their coworkers’ personal political or medical beliefs, which @EMPOWR_us first revealed to the public three weeks ago.

https://twitter.com/empowr_us/status/1800351708687782156

"The crimes found by the jury were committed on October 12, 2018, and were fully known to law enforcement within less than two weeks when the gun was recovered after the defendant’s then-girlfriend — the wife of his late brother, whom he’d also gotten hooked on crack — took the Colt Cobra .38, which he’d illegally purchased while lying on the required federal form, and recklessly discarded it in a trash bin near a school, out of fear that in his drug-addled state he’d hurt himself or others. If the defendant’s name had been Robert Hunter Smith, any normal federal prosecutor would have prosecuted him for these crimes by early 2019, if not sooner — and there’d have been no concerns about the Secret Service mysteriously intervening to make the damning evidence disappear." "The defendant was named Robert Hunter Biden and the federal prosecutor was the abnormally political David Weiss, so the prosecution took six years — and if Weiss and the Biden Justice Department had had their way, it wouldn’t have happened at all."

🚨🚨 These records the FBI produced to @JudicialWatch showing the FBI's coordination with House Democrats to smear our clients are a HUGE deal: .

When Marcus Allen, @RealStevefriend, @GOBactual and I testified before @JudiciaryGOP's @Weaponization on May 18, 2023, we strongly suspected the FBI or DOJ had coordinated with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.

That's why @EMPOWR_us filed this FOIA request with DOJ the day of that hearing for DOJ communications with one staffer for Ranking Member Nadler: .

It looks like the problem was worse than we thought.

Let's walk through the timeline of how this played out... 🧵judicialwatch.org/documents/jw-v…
empowr.us/wp-content/upl… Throughout February 2023, @JudiciaryGOP conducted bipartisan transcribed interviews of several FBI whistleblowers as part of @Weaponization’s investigation into the politicization of the FBI.

Rather than focusing on the substance of the whistleblowers’ disclosures, Judiciary Democrats spent most of those interviews talking about tweets, press interviews, or other First Amendment activity the whistleblowers had engaged in.

It seems doubtful that Democratic staff spent hundreds of hours poring over podcast interviews with @kyleseraphin to find the material, raising the question of where they obtained it.

“‘The defendant’s laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt’… Hines underscored that the laptop data…is ‘self-authenticating’ and will be ‘introduced with corroborating evidence at trial.’”

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1793389476523266196

This is a doozy of a filing. "[D]efense counsel demonstrates...despite claiming they do, they actually have no evidence to give them 'reasons to believe that data has been altered and compromised before investigators obtained the electronic material." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

“In 2021, AUSA Leslie Wolf told investigators they could not pursue Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris as a witness based on information she received from the CIA. Investigators were never provided the same information that AUSA Wolf received.” gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/chairman-smith… See SSA Gary Shapley’s affidavit about this here. gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/upl…

🚨🚨 Today IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler have taken the extraordinary step of filing a motion to intervene in Hunter Biden's lawsuit against the IRS in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Read why below... 🧵 courtlistener.com/docket/6780378…
They filed it so they can do what the IRS has failed to: make clear that their protected disclosures were legal, pursuant to whistleblower protection laws, and critical to safeguarding the principle of equal treatment under the law regardless of party or familial relationship.

🚨🚨 BREAKING: This morning the legal team of IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley referred to @JusticeOIG and DOJ OPR the conduct of Special Counsel David Weiss for attacking the IRS whistleblowers' reputation by leading the world to believe they were under investigation.🧵 Weiss's March 11 filing in the CA criminal case against Hunter Biden opened with an attack on the IRS whistleblowers, comparing their conduct with that of Hunter Biden's. (In a subsequent hearing, Weiss's office referred to the whistleblowers as "hyenas, baying at the moon.")

🚨 This morning @JusticeOIG released a memo citing concerns about DOJ's compliance with whistleblower protections for employees with a security clearance. The review was in part prompted by the whistleblower complaint of @EMPOWR_us's client, Marcus Allen. oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-r… @JusticeOIG @EMPOWR_us Mr. Allen is an employee of the @FBI. According to the DOJ OIG report, the FBI waits on average 17.5 months between suspending an employee's security clearance and making a final decision on whether to revoke it or reinstate it. (That doesn't count any time spent appealing.)

This is a big one to watch... @EMPOWR_us "is asking a federal court to unseal documents related to the Justice Department’s subpoenas of the personal phone and email records of members of Congress and during the Trump-Russia investigation." foxnews.com/politics/watch… @EMPOWR_us Those subpoenas included my partner, @EMPOWR_us's founder Jason Foster. At the time of the DOJ subpoenas, he was the chief investigative counsel to our former boss, @ChuckGrassley, leading oversight of the Trump-Russia investigation. So DOJ had *zero* business seeking his coms.