VERNON, Wis.—What hit home the hardest for suspended FBI Special Agent Garret J. O’Boyle was a hand-crafted note made by his 7-year-old daughter, Gwen.
A sensitive and conscientious girl, Gwen colored her note with blue marker—Dad’s favorite color. On the cover she drew a blue heart. Inside she penned her best words of encouragement.
“I love you,” the note began. “Hope you start attacking. We believe in you that you get your job back. Love, Gwen.”
The father of four girls got choked up trying to read the note.
O’Boyle, 36, and his wife Heidi, 37, have tried to shield the girls from the tempest swirling around them. Little girls are perceptive, however.
Tears welled up in O’Boyle’s eyes, thinking about his girls.
“For a little 7-year-old girl to see that and suffer in that way,” O’Boyle said, his voice trailing off. “I thought I was covering it up as best I could. And then she gave me that, and I knew that I wasn’t.”
This Wisconsin family of six is at the center of an FBI firestorm. O'Boyle is part of a whistleblower group trying to expose the weaponization of the once-vaunted federal agency founded in July 1908.
O’Boyle had his FBI security clearance yanked by the bureau on Sept. 26, 2022, after an allegation was lodged that he said was retaliation for his reporting FBI abuses to a U.S. House committee.
He was one of three current and former FBI employees who testified on May 18 before House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, chaired by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
The U.S. Army veteran and former patrol officer with the Waukesha, Wis., police department has transformed himself from a law-enforcement officer and agent to a whistleblower, trying to expose what he and others see as the dark path being followed by the FBI.
The testimony given and allegations made by O’Boyle, former agent Steve Friend, and suspended agent Marcus Allen put them under heavy fire and led to job suspension, loss of income, deeply personal attacks from Democrats, and an uncertain future. While on suspension, the men were not allowed to seek other employment.
Their private testimony before Jordan’s committee from February 2023 was leaked to corporate media in highly selective—and often inaccurate—snippets.
“They leaked parts of these guys’ interviews to the press. The press reported on it, and then the press had to issue corrections,” Jordan said. “The Post, Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone. Because what the Democrats told them wasn’t accurate, what they reported wasn’t accurate.”
The men have been subjected to some of the same treatment that hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants have experienced since early 2021. O'Boyle had a hard-earned promotion snatched from him the day the job started—a situation that left his family living in an RV with nowhere else to go.
Jan. 6 Cases
O'Boyle was assigned to the FBI’s Wichita, Kan., resident agency, part of the Kansas City Field Office. Like many special agents, he was assigned to investigate Jan. 6 cases after the 2021 Capitol incursion.One case involved following up on a tip that came to the National Threat Operations Center (NTOC). The tip said that a particular man was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, “with a group of other people and that they had weapons.”
O'Boyle said for tips like this to be useful, they need corroboration. So he traveled to the man’s hometown and made contact with him through an officer at the local police department.
The man said he did not want to speak to the FBI. Still, O'Boyle said he wanted to perform his due diligence.
“At some point, this took me maybe five days, a week, to run the ground entirely,” he said. “Because as it progressed, I was like, I’ve got to dot every I and cross every T on this, or it’s going to come back on me as if I’m not doing my job.”
A short time later, O'Boyle received an email on the FBI’s unclassified system with an alleged facial-recognition match for the subject. He checked it against the man’s most recent driver’s license photo. There was no resemblance.
“The photo they used of someone on the steps at the Capitol, was a guy with a full head of hair, and was probably 150 pounds lighter than my guy,” O‘Boyle said. “And I’m like, ’What the heck is going on here?'”
O'Boyle tracked the facial recognition “match” back to an FBI employee in Kansas City. He called the man.
This guy was adamant about how I had a match,“ O‘Boyle recalled. ”I was like, ’What is it not clear about this? You sent me a driver’s license photo from 25 years ago. Do you understand due process at all?‘ And he’s like, ’You have a match.’
“I’m looking at your email. I just sent you the up-to-date, driver’s license photo,” O‘Boyle said. “He opens it and we’re talking and we end the phone call and he goes, ’It’s your case, do whatever you want with it, but you still have a match.‘ I’m like, ’What the heck is wrong with your brain?'”
A short time later, an agent in the FBI Washington Field Office sent an email requesting O‘Boyle draw up a grand jury subpoena for someone with an account on the website AR15.com—ostensibly O’Boyle’s subject.
“Where are they getting this idea?” O'Boyle said. “Based off that anonymous tip, you think that John Doe is the username from AR-15.com? Based off of what?”
Lack of Evidence
“They didn’t do the grand jury subpoena either, because they didn’t have enough. You can’t just subpoena whatever you want,” O'Boyle said. “You have to have some type of indicia that you can.“I read what that guy wrote up and he closed his report on Saturday. There’s not enough information here for me to subpoena this because there was this post on AR15.com.”
O'Boyle took all of his information on the subject to his training officer, to get a sense if he was missing something.
“He’s like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t know what is up with these people, why they’re really trying so hard to get this information.’”
As a final step, both men called the Washington Field Office agent who originally asked for the grand jury subpoenas.
“We call her up,” O‘Boyle recalled. “She’s like, giggling. Not one answer about why she wants me to do the things she’s asking me to do. We get off the phone, and I look at [my training officer], I’m like, ’I ain’t doing that. I’m not doing any of that.'”
O'Boyle declined to pursue the subject further for lack of evidence. He eventually submitted the case to Congress as an abuse of authority, gross mismanagement and violation of a rule or policy.
A New Assignment
Things could not have been going any better when O'Boyle decided to apply for a new FBI position based in Washington. A new unit was being formed to do surveillance. A kind of quick-response force that would aid any FBI office that needed more substantial surveillance capabilities than what was on hand locally.After being chosen for the unit in late May 2022, O'Boyle began looking for a new home in suburban Virginia. He was in Washington for training for the new assignment. He decided to use his evenings to look for a new house.
After the last day of training, he found a house he loved in Stafford, a city of about 160,000 in northern Virginia. The move was going to be good for the family.
By late September 2022, O'Boyle was ready to start his new job. The family house Kansas was sold. The family was living in an Airbnb until the new house was ready. All of the family belongings were in storage in Virginia.
O'Boyle said his new boss tried to talk him into taking a few days of leave rather than report on the agreed-upon date. He was anxious to get started, so he showed up on Sept. 26.
One other employee showed up for orientation that day. That person was led down one hall, while O'Boyle was shown into a conference room.
That’s when the trouble started.
O'Boyle said he was told that someone made an allegation that he leaked protected information to two media outlets, the Washington Times and Project Veritas.
“I met with two agents ... who never identified themselves with their creds,” O‘Boyle said. “I don’t even know if they told me their names. They asked me some of this stuff about Veritas and Washington Times. And I’m like, ’Nope, not me.‘ I’m thinking like, ’Oh, I’m just gonna tell them it wasn’t me. And I’m gonna go back to work.'”
That didn’t happen.
A security officer and two more agents came into the room. O'Boyle was told to surrender his service weapon, his credentials and building-access card.
“I take my gun out of my holster and I go to unload it and this other agent grabs my arm, and takes it out of my hand,” O'Boyle said.
“I’m thinking, ‘Really, dude?’ I’m thinking, ‘If I wanted to shoot you, you would have been shot.’ You don’t need to do that. But he did.”
O'Boyle’s security clearance was revoked by the FBI and he was placed on unpaid suspension. In a matter of minutes, his dream promotion and his income evaporated.
His belongings were being held by the bureau. His wife was back in Wisconsin, recovering from the C-section delivery of their daughter, Lucy.
“That’s the part that has been the hardest for me is to have my livelihood stripped,” he said. “My ability to take care of my family just taken. And, you know, I’m sure people would say this is too extreme, but I don’t think it is.
“In the modern era, when you take a man’s livelihood away from him, and you tell him he can’t have another one, that’s a death warrant. And you’re going to say, ‘You quit. We’re not going to fire you. You quit.’ And then you can go on about your life.”
Partisan Attacks
Before O'Boyle, Friend, and Allen spoke a syllable of testimony before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Chairman Jordan warned them about attacks from Democrat lawmakers.“I just want to tell you guys, get ready,” Jordan said. “Get ready because these guys are going to come after you. You know they are.”
Wearing a blue suit, light blue dress shirt and a green, blue and orange patterned tie selected by his daughter Iris, O'Boyle was the first to testify.
“I’m sad. I’m disappointed, and I’m angry that I have to be here to testify about the weaponization of the FBI and the DOJ.”
He sat before a deeply divided group of lawmakers and told his story of FBI retaliation for reporting malfeasance to Congress.
“I never swore an oath to the FBI,” O'Boyle said. “I swore an oath to the Constitution.”
As soon as the men finished their prepared remarks, the attacks began from Democrat members of the subcommittee.
Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) confronted Allen with a Twitter post about Jan. 6. She seemed unfazed when he told her that it was not his post or his account.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) repeatedly interrupted committee chairman Jordan, asserting the men “are not whistleblowers.”
Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands) said: “MAGA Republicans are a threat to the rule of law in America.” She called the witnesses “former agents” who lost their top-secret clearances “because they were a threat to our national security.”
Schultz suggested former Special Agent Friend’s coming to Congress with whistleblower disclosures was timed to coincide with the forthcoming release of a book, “True Blue.”
Tougher Than War
For O'Boyle, having his loyalty and patriotism questioned has been especially vexing.He enlisted in the U.S. Army as an infantryman in 2006, serving two years in Alaska and one year in Iraq. He reenlisted, was promoted to sergeant and assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, 4th Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Campbell, Ky.
In Iraq, O'Boyle’s platoon was stationed about 50 miles from the Iranian border. One day, a man on a bus full of people blew himself up in a town that was part of his platoon’s area of operation.
“We get spun off to go respond. So we get out there and it’s mayhem. You know, it’s, I think in total, there were right around 45 dead, 77 wounded and body parts.
“The two I remember the most was this little kid, my oldest nephew, they were about the same age at the time. Just [lying] on the ground. And then this old lady. You know those white plastic lawn chairs, the cheap ones? [She was] just sitting in one of those, slumped over.”
Even after experiencing the horrors of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, O'Boyle said being targeted by the FBI is worse.
“It has taken more of a toll than war, and I think that’s really quite the statement,” he said. “I think part of that is because I never thought I would be a target of my own government for trying to do what’s right, for trying to live up to the oath that I’ve taken.”
Helping Hands
The O'Boyle family spent about eight weeks living in his brother-in-law’s RV back in Wisconsin before finding a rental home.Early mornings when he couldn’t sleep, O'Boyle sat outside in a lawn chair, watching videos of the trial of Darrell Brooks, the Milwaukee man who drove his red SUV down the Christmas parade route in Waukesha in November 2021, mowing down children and adults. Six people were killed and more than 60 injured.
The parade massacre hit home for O'Boyle, since his former colleagues worked all along the parade route. One of his best friends at the Waukesha Police Department—Officer Bryce Scholten—fired three shots into the SUV in an attempt to stop Brooks’ deadly rampage.
O'Boyle’s former co-workers have stepped up to help his family, which has been without benefit of his FBI salary for more than eight months.
Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI special agent who said he was targeted for suspension for questioning the Bureau’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates, said the treatment O'Boyle received from Democrats on Capitol Hill and the FBI was “atrocious.”
“It feels calculated,” Seraphin told The Epoch Times. “And it was pathetically unprofessional and sloppy investigative work to make an allegation about him doing something when there is zero evidence he did what they alleged.
“Any serious and competent investigation would have involved asking me questions since he and I were coordinating whistleblower activity,” Seraphin said.
House Democrats tried to make an issue of $5,000 grants given to the whistleblower families at Christmas 2022 by a foundation run by Kash Patel, a former senior Trump administration official. O'Boyle said the money was a godsend.
Patel, the co-host of “Kash’s Corner” on Epoch TV, said his foundation will continue to help whistleblowers.
“We provide support to brave patriots who protect our nation while the radical left and government gangsters destroy the essence of our republic with their two-tier system of justice,” Patel told The Epoch Times.
“Having a charitable foundation is not a monopoly they own. We are committed to the truth and give financial assistance to those in need, especially the courageous Americans who shed sunlight on government corruption.”
One of the most remarkable moments during the whole whistleblower ordeal came when a former Waukesha Police Department officer passed along a message from O'Boyle’s former captain. It said simply: “Are you safe?”
“I was like, ‘I don’t know. I won’t hold my breath,’” O'Boyle said. “But think of that. He’s a captain. I think he’s been there over 20 years. He was an Army Ranger. That’s what real law enforcement thinks of the FBI.
“They think that their former colleague is now unsafe because of his speaking out. What does that tell America? That scary stuff.”
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