Suspended Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Garret O’Boyle delivered chilling testimony on Thursday warning his colleagues not to speak out about government corruption after he alleged that the agency left his “family homeless.”
The three on-the-record FBI whistleblowers accused the agency of “retaliatory conduct” after they spoke out about the bureau’s “abuse and misconduct” and “politicized rot.”
A report released Thursday by the committee revealed allegations that the FBI unjustly investigated Americans and pressured staff to “reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), and even manufactured DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist.”
According to O’Boyle, after he came forward with the allegations, the FBI relocated him to an office on the other side of the country. O’Boyle claimed that when he arrived for his first day of work at the new field office, he was informed by the FBI that he was being placed on unpaid suspension.
The whistleblower stated that the agency effectively left him and his family “homeless” and prevented him from accessing their belongings, which were still in FBI storage because of the recent relocation.
During Thursday’s House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing, O’Boyle advised future whistleblowers not to come forward about potential FBI corruption because of the alleged retaliation he and his family endured.
North Dakota Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong asked, “With all of the hardships you’ve gone through, if one of your really good friends, your former colleague, came to you and said, ‘I have this thing that is being covered up and I think the American people need to know about it,’ what advice would you give them?” Armstrong inquired.
O’Boyle replied, “I would tell them first to pray about it, long and hard.”
“I would tell them I could take it to Congress for them, or I could put them in touch with Congress,” he continued. “But I would advise them not to do it.”
Armstrong asked, “You would legitimately try to protect one of your colleagues from doing what you have done?”
“Absolutely,” O’Boyle responded without hesitation.
“And how do you think that solves being able to shine light on corruption, weaponization, any kind of misconduct that exists with the American people?” Armstrong questioned.
“It doesn’t solve it,” O’Boyle candidly replied before giving an eerie warning to future whistleblowers.
“But the FBI will crush you,” he continued. “This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things they are doing that are wrong.”
“We are all examples of that,” O’Boyle stated, referring to himself along with two other FBI whistleblowers — former Special Agent Stephen Friend and suspended Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill — who testified in front of Congress Thursday.
Armstrong yielded back his time, concluding, “I can’t think of a more sobering way to end a hearing.”
About the Author
Let me, who has experience with the FBI, add my voice to those of the whistleblowers:
17 January 2021
U.S. Congressman Antonio Delgado
1007 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Congressman:
As this new year begins, I hope it finds you well, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your confirmation in a May 22, 2020 e-mail to me from your regional representative Madison Wellman on the record and for the record the fact that with respect to my civil and human rights being stripped from me by the Town of Poestenkill in your Congressional District in retaliation for my having given evidence of endemic corruption in Poestenkill to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there will be no aid or comfort coming my way from the federal government, which is something I was first informed of in early 1992 by an FBI agent named Tom Dauenhauer with whom I had been involved with in the Hobbs Act investigation of endemic public corruption in Poestenkill and Rensselaer County.
In that conversation with FBI agent Dauenhauer, which occurred on Broadway in Albany in front of the Post Office building where the FBI was at that time located, the FBI agent took pains to explain to me just how stupid I had been in trying to blow the whistle on public corruption in New York state, and since he was in a mood to teach, I figured I might as well stay for the whole lesson, which included a primer on how I was sold down the river by an assistant U.S. attorney named Barbara Cottrell, in exchange for her name being placed on a list of appointees to a federal judgeship, and how evidence I had provided of corruption in Rensselaer County and Poestenkill had been destroyed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
He then told me that he had been ordered to have no contact with me, and his advice to me at that point was quite explicit: I had very powerful political enemies in New York, and that as a result, I would be wisest if I would run somewhere far from here and go into hiding, because while I was still here, they would remain relentless in their efforts to do me harm in as public a manner as possible to make me an example to discourage anyone else who would think of doing as I dared to do, which was to blow the whistle on corruption in Rensselaer County and Poestenkill.
And my life has been made into a living hell ever since, because I am not a runner.
Thank you for confirming that that is not going to change for me in this lifetime if the federal government has any say in the matter.
Respectfully,
Paul R. Plante, NYSPE