June 11, 2024 - The Tucker Carlson Show
15:39
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| So the FBI is the most powerful law enforcement organization in the world, certainly in the free world, or what we've referred to for our lifetimes as the free world. | ||
| So the nightmare scenario is that it becomes perverted, subverted into a secret police force, a Tauntaun Makoot accountable to politicians and used to punish the adversaries of the regime. | ||
| That's the one thing you can't have happen, or your country will no longer be a free country. | ||
| Well, there's some evidence, unfortunately, that that is happening, and the latest comes from an FBI whistleblower. | ||
| And the documents that he's handed over to John Solomon of Just the News suggest that the FBI now has an internal political litmus test. | ||
| In his case, in order to get a security clearance after 12 years working for the agency, the FBI checks whether he supported the vax regime. | ||
| Donald Trump, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. | ||
| And after it was determined that he supported all of these things, which at least half the country does support, he was denied his security clearance. | ||
| Again, this comes from documents newly unearthed that confirmed the FBI checked his loyalty before allowing him a security clearance. | ||
| And when denied that, he was suspended indefinitely without. | ||
| So the FBI has not provided any comment to John Solomon, who broke this story and got these documents. | ||
| But Tristan Levitt, who's the president of the group Empower Oversight, is representing him in court and joins us right now with an overview of this case. | ||
| Tristan, thank you very much for coming on. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Is that a fair characterization? | ||
|
unidentified
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Why don't you start at the beginning and tell us what you have uncovered and what this employee underwent at the FBI? So what makes this a little bit different from your average FBI employee is that this employee, who has chosen to remain anonymous, did get swept up into the funnel of folks being investigated after January 6th. | |
| So the FBI cast a very wide net because of that. | ||
| There was, frankly, some hysteria within the Bureau, almost McCarthyism, searching out anybody that had... | ||
| Uh, views with any, you know, after searching out anybody who had any ties to events of that day, then examining their views. | ||
| So this client particularly is someone who had decided on the day of January 6th to go down and hear President Trump's speech. | ||
| Uh, after attending the rally, he walked down to the Capitol and stayed outside on the grounds. | ||
| He never went inside the Capitol. | ||
| He was never involved in any violence. | ||
| He was never involved in any conflict. | ||
| Eventually the FBI became aware. | ||
| That he had been at the Capitol, which is ironic because the day after it, he self-reported his attendance. | ||
| But that didn't attract any notice within the FBI until a year later. | ||
| And at that point, the hysteria was in full force. | ||
| And so there were a number of FBI whistleblowers, several of whom we have represented, people like Steve Friend, Marcus Allen, Garrett O'Boyle, who were objecting in various ways to how the FBI was approaching its investigations of those. | ||
| Related to January 6th. | ||
| But this particular individual had his security clearance suspended, and that's when all of this hit. | ||
| And so one year ago, I testified alongside three of those other whistleblowers, Steve Friend, Mark Salen, Garrett O'Boyle, in front of the Weaponization Committee. | ||
| And at the time, the FBI had just released information that they had all had their security clearance suspended. | ||
| A couple of them revoked. | ||
| And so as we started that hearing, Delegate Stacey Plaskett Opened by saying, you know, Chairman Jordan, you've invited these people here who are a threat to our national security. | ||
| How dare you? | ||
| And now, a year later, we've been able to pull back the curtain and see the FBI's documentation for why it did what it did with their clearances. | ||
| And that's the context in which we've seen this sort of questioning going on, asking people if they ever supported President Trump. | ||
| And mind you, it wasn't just that they asked these individuals. | ||
| These were Interviews by the security clearance division of their fellow employees. | ||
| So people who are compelled to answer, who had to either answer these questions from the security division or have their own security clearance called into question. | ||
| And they were asked, did you ever socialize with these individuals? | ||
| What was your association with them? | ||
| And then asked these extremely intrusive questions. | ||
| And so that's the context in which this very problematic. | ||
| Set of questions came up and what we are hearing is that this may be just the tip of the iceberg, that there were many, you know, that certainly there have been allegations out there that once people got swept into that security funnel, that there was a purge of FBI employees that had conservative views or had skepticism of the vaccine or just hesitancy to receive it. | ||
| And now in black and white, we've uncovered those documents because of our client's security appeal where we've been able to see the basis. | ||
| On which his colleagues were questioned, and this is extremely problematic. | ||
| It was pretty clear from the beginning, I mean, there are different threads here, but on the vax specifically, that the vaccine mandates were designed, and certainly their effect was, to winnow out people with high testosterone levels, independent thinking, commitment to liberty, common sense, out of positions. | ||
| In the federal government, and that would definitely include the military, but also at the agencies, including the FBI. So they found out this guy didn't take the vax, and that was one of the factors? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, it clearly was one of the factors. | |
| And it's ironic because this came three months after a court had put an injection on the federal employee vaccine mandate. | ||
| And so this was not even a live issue. | ||
| This was not a matter of you're currently required to and you're not. | ||
| Months after that, they're asking his colleagues, did he ever express any hesitancy about the COVID-19 vaccine? | ||
| Hesitancy! | ||
| Did he pause before allowing an injection? | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, and of course, the reverse of this, right? | |
| I think every American would agree. | ||
| It would not be appropriate in the future for the FBI to ask employees, did they ever express any support for receiving an abortion? | ||
| You know, this idea that any of the FBI's business whatsoever is really, really outrageous. | ||
| Support for Donald Trump, support for the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, our founding document. | ||
| So these are disqualifying positions? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, that clearly seems to be the case behind the scenes. | |
| Now, again, keep in mind, this is not what was put into the security clearance suspension letter that our client received or that other whistleblowers we have represented received. | ||
| It's not what went into their revocation letters. | ||
| So it's only now, like I said, pulling back the curtain, that we see that it's... | ||
| Behind closed doors, right? | ||
| So it's within this black box of secrecy, and it's really this secret process that has no oversight from the outside, generally no oversight from the inspector general, no oversight from Congress. | ||
| That's an environment that allowed this to flourish because otherwise we never would have known about this had we not seen those backing documents because, again, the proposals themselves didn't reference any of these things that we would consider illegitimate. | ||
| They just talked about whether someone engaged in violence, whether they broke laws on January 6th. | ||
| And, you know, the things that stretched beyond that into personal political views or, again, even feelings about one's own bodily autonomy, all of that was hidden in these documents. | ||
| And now that we've ripped the mask off the FBI, again, we are certainly going to push the inspector general to see whether this happened in other cases. | ||
| And we strongly expect that they will find that it did. | ||
| So for those who don't work in or around government, it may be hard to appreciate. | ||
| How central a security clearance is if you're working in an agency like the FBI. I mean, you can't do your job without a clearance, but the criteria for getting and holding a clearance are sometimes muddy. | ||
| In other words, there's a lot of subjective judgment, and it's particularly vulnerable to political interference, right? | ||
| Because there isn't, you know, character, for example, is one of the criteria. | ||
| How much do we know, not just about this case, but about all security clearances across the millions of federal employees, about how these clearances are awarded? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, there are criteria that are supposed to be consistent across the board. | |
| So there are executive orders, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. | ||
| Puts out guidance on these. | ||
| It is subjective agency by agency. | ||
| Several years ago when I worked on Capitol Hill as an investigator, we did a very in-depth investigation into the Secret Service and how they issued clearances. | ||
| And, you know, it was clear that there it does change from agency to agency. | ||
| You know, and what's ironic about this is that, again, as a credential, if you will, if someone gets pushed out of the FBI, you know, because they say, you know. | ||
| Didn't show up for work on time or something else. | ||
| That looks bad if you're fired. | ||
| If you have your security clearance revoked, you're not in a position to go to another agency. | ||
| You can't say, I want to go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement because I think that they need some help over there. | ||
| No, you have been deemed disloyal to the United States. | ||
| And so lacking a security clearance, that's a huge, huge issue. | ||
| And this came up as we recently obtained total vindication for one of those individuals I mentioned, Marcus Allen, who had been an FBI employee. | ||
| And just last week, we were We're able to get his clearance reinstated. | ||
| We're able to get him full back pay for 27 months that he was without work. | ||
| But during that whole entire time, you know, it's not just this future idea of a credential. | ||
| During that whole entire time, he was not paid while he was held in limbo. | ||
| And so, again, it seemed designed to squeeze him to leaving the FBI, which is what this anonymous client in the current case that we're talking about did. | ||
| But again, if you leave while your clearance is suspended or while it is revoked, you don't have a future hope of getting a job with another law enforcement agency or anywhere that would require a clearance or access to secure classified information. | ||
| What's so baffling is that Republicans hold the majority in the House. | ||
| There's a Republican speaker. | ||
| We now know you've proven with these documents that supporting a Republican for president is enough to get your security clearance revoked. | ||
| So the FBI is, by definition, Political secret police organization. | ||
| And that's antithetical to freedom. | ||
| And yet the Republicans in the Congress, even though this is all very obvious, just refunded the FBI and allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to build them a new headquarters. | ||
| They're rewarding the FBI. So at what point do Republicans say, I'm sorry, we're not going to pay for a secret police organization dedicated to destroying us? | ||
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unidentified
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I think these documents are going to be the tipping point, frankly. | |
| I think that the inspector general, we expect that an investigation by the inspector general will open up. | ||
| We expect that Congress is going to be doing oversight of that. | ||
| And along with some of these other instances of vindication, I think this summer we're going to see exposed quite a bit how the FBI has shown such political bias in what they do. | ||
| And so I think Congress has a unique opportunity here, a unique opportunity to Overhaul the FBI, the personnel that are in it at the moment, to reform that and also to pursue broader reforms from a legal front. | ||
| And so to your point about funding, I think this is the time. | ||
| I think this is the thing that more than anything else, these documents demonstrate in black and white what individuals like Chairman Jim Jordan have been alleging for two years. | ||
| And now we have the definitive proof of that. | ||
| So we expect there's going to be a lot of attention given to these and not just from Congress, but from places like the Inspector General Michael Horowitz. | ||
| And the press and others, because now you cannot deny that these political considerations weren't just tossed around in a general sense. | ||
| They weren't just possible considerations. | ||
| They were there in black and white for individuals in their security clearance determinations. | ||
| I mean, it just becomes clear every day that January 6th was, well, a hoax on one level, but the response to it was one of the most corrupt things that's ever happened in our lifetimes in this country. | ||
| I mean, that's the conclusion I'm coming to. | ||
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unidentified
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It's difficult. | |
| Clearly, that's a touchpoint for a lot of people. | ||
| And I will tell you, as a former congressional staffer, it was difficult for me to see where there was violence on January 6th, right? | ||
| And so those that broke laws, you know, I don't have any objection to those people, you know, suffering the consequences for that, right? | ||
| And I think for most Americans, that's the case. | ||
| Again, within the FBI, you know, for people to have just been on the grounds and the FBI to have gone after those individuals for that to become. | ||
| And again, that was the tipping point within the FBI for this sort of hysteria where anybody that came to the attention of the security division. | ||
| All of these other factors then got wrapped in, right? | ||
| It wasn't a question of, were you present? | ||
| And then did you go inside the Capitol or did you engage in violence? | ||
| It's, do you have any views that we don't favor? | ||
| And so for that to lead to a purge of conservative employees, again, is just totally inappropriate and wrong. | ||
| But, you know, it's a sign of how polarizing January 6th was to our country, I think. | ||
| One of the things that we brought to the attention of the inspector general a year ago was that less than a month after January 6th, the new deputy director of the FBI, a guy named Paul Abate, spoke up in a call with all special agents in charge around the country for the FBI and said, if you don't like our response to January 6th and how we're going after this, the FBI is not the place for you. | ||
| You can come and talk to me, but we don't need agents like that in the FBI. And it's just not healthy or fair for the FBI to push out, say, roughly half of its employees just because they have differing political views, who weren't there on January 6th, didn't engage in violence, none of those things, but for the FBI to use that as a pretext to say, well, we don't need you and we don't want you here right now. | ||
| Well, I would go farther and say that's tyranny, right? | ||
| I mean, this is an agency that's allowed to kill you if they deem it justified. | ||
| They can use lethal force against American citizens, so they cannot be a political instrument. | ||
| Or else it's tyrannical, no? | ||
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unidentified
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It's extremely important that they be, you know, both perceived and be neutral. | |
| Perceived as and be neutral, yes. | ||
| That they are not just hiring people based on one political view or the other. | ||
| Yes, it raises major, major concerns about because of their ability to use force and the role that they play in American society. | ||
| Last question. | ||
| Why is your client, the whistleblower, not coming forward by name? | ||
|
unidentified
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Multiple reasons. | |
| I think for starters, there is the fact that they are not a public individual. | ||
| This is not someone that sought out attention. | ||
| And to the extent that this is the whistleblower disclosures that are involved here are us raising to the inspector general and others the misuse of the security clearance process. | ||
| So this was not someone where the whole process started with disclosures or something like that. | ||
| But this is someone who's a very private individual. | ||
| Doesn't want to see all this strewn out to the world. | ||
| Another reason that I think is significant is that in this instance, they are still hopeful that they can, after an Inspector General examination, have the possibility of getting their clearance back. | ||
| That if the Inspector General realizes how tainted this whole process was, You know, that the inspector general can help to set things right. | ||
| That's what happened in Marcus Allen's case, that the inspector general did a very lengthy investigation. | ||
| And we believe that played a big role in the FBI saying, maybe we better reinstate this person. | ||
| So if there's a possibility like that, I think it means more to this client to have the possibility of their economic livelihood restored than to make some splashy headlines. | ||
| But, you know, this is significant and they recognize this is significant. | ||
| And that's why they're OK with this being shared with the American public. | ||
| Sure appreciate your explaining that for us. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Tristan Lutter. |
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