A top FBI official told Congress last year it believed one of its agents, whistleblower Garret O’Boyle, was the suspected leaker in an anonymously filmed interview with the undercover citizen-journalism organization Project Veritas. The claim even led some congressional Democrats to urge a criminal investigation of the agent.
There’s just one problem.
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Several major whistleblower groups are fighting the Justice Department’s efforts in federal court to permanently hide why it spied on congressional investigators by obtaining their phone records during a leaks investigation years ago.
The whistleblower group, Empower Oversight, whose founder Jason Foster was one of the investigators whose phone records were taken when he was still in a top Senate staffer, had asked a federal judge to unseal the underlying documents that allowed DOJ to acquire the records in 2017.
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In the legal back-and-forth between Hunter Biden’s defense team and prosecutor Special Counsel David Weiss, the government appeared to acknowledge in court filings the existence of an ongoing investigation as part of the Hunter Biden tax investigation.
The government said in a request to seal certain documents that “The justification for the redaction and the sealed exhibits is that the redacted information contained in the filing and the sealed exhibits relates to a potential ongoing investigation(s) and the investigating agency(cies) specifically requested that the government request that the court seal the exhibits, as well as any accompanying reference in the pleading, in order to protect the integrity of the potential ongoing investigation(s).”
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A top official with the FBI has filed a protected disclosure to the Office of the Inspector General alleging that FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told the bureau’s internal critics of its Jan. 6-related cases to seek employment elsewhere and offered to personally address his subordinates’ agents concerns.
In a sworn affidavit, the 15-year veteran FBI special agent alleges that, during a routine meeting in February 2021, the deputy director addressed internal concerns that the bureau had not taken the same approach to its investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as it did with the 2020 riots and protests related to the death of George Floyd.
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The Biden administration is garnering some negative attention from Congress for leaving  the chief taxpayer watchdog positions vacant at the Department of State, the Department of Treasury and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) addressed a letter to President Joe Biden seeking answers why the key  Inspectors General jobs are still open.
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A dossier alleging Russian collusion funded by a Democrat presidential candidate. A suggestion that school parents were domestic terrorists from a left-leaning school board group. A list suggesting old-fashioned Catholics were extremists from a liberal watchdog on hate speech.
Three triggers for investigation. Three blunders that left America’s premier law enforcement agency reeling with a black eye.
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After a watchdog group and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) pushed the Veterans Affairs Officer of the Inspector General (VA-OIG) to look into a possible conflict of interest, that OIG this week released a report saying that one VA official may have broken rules regarding conflicts of interest.Â
The potential conflict of interest centers around executive director of the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) Charmain Bogue and her husband’s business dealings.Â
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A government watchdog Tuesday took the next step in its battle to expose Chinese connections to the National Institute of Health (NIH).
“Empower Oversight filed an amended complaint today against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation for documents related to a request by Chinese researchers to remove genetic sequences related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus from a database controlled by NIH,” that group said in a press release.Â
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A nonprofit watchdog group on Wednesday sued the Justice Department, seeking to force the release of documents related to Special Counsel John Durham’s inquiry into wrongdoing during the FBI’s now-discredited Trump-Russia investigation.
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Empower Oversight, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization with the goal of enhancing oversight of government, won an appeal for six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, allowing the group to access documents previously undisclosed.
The organization sought documents related to multiple reports of misconduct in the Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General (FHFA-OIG).
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