Several FBI whistleblowers are set to testify on Thursday (May 18) against the agency’s leadership, describing what they characterized as an abuse of power.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Federal Government is preparing to host suspended FBI special agents Steve Friend and Garret O’Boyle.
According to a news release by the committee, former FBI state operations specialist Marcus Allen and Tristan Leavitt, president of the whistleblower advocacy group Empower Oversight, are also scheduled to attend.
The hearing, organized by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, will be probing allegations that the FBI inflated domestic terrorism statistics and harassed conservatives.
Thursday’s hearing was first reported by the Daily Mail, which broke the news on Monday (May 15).
By late Wednesday, the FBI had revoked the security clearances of three agents who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack or who expressed opinions later about the incident that called into question their “allegiance to the United States,” according to the New York Times.
Two of them — Friend and Allen — are scheduled to testify Thursday, with the bureau’s letter informing Congressional Leaders that the agency has revoked their authorization coming a day before that hearing.
The third man mentioned in the letter was Brett Gloss. The FBI has suspended all three while the agency reviews their cases, the Times reported.
Sources told the Daily Mail that the officials who testified were particularly concerned about the agency’s insistence that they prioritized investigating the January 6 Capitol attack protesters, even prioritizing such investigations above sex crimes against children.
