Long-suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle — who still awaits justice for the Biden administration’s apparent retaliation against him for being a whistleblower — says his Christian faith continues to drive him as he seeks to have his security clearance reinstated and his good name restored after 30 months of hardship.
A week after Empower Oversight sent a
history of his case to the FBI with a request to reconsider the bureau’s revocation of his security clearance, O’Boyle said while he struggles with the painful delays, he uses his experience to talk to people about Jesus Christ and the faith that sustains him and his family.
‘I’ve thought about the biblical accounting of Joseph many times.’
“That’s where I keep leaning more and more, is to try to just speak the truth of Christ,” O’Boyle said in an interview with Blaze News. “And so if that’s the purpose — and I think in a way it already is — then so be it.
“Who cares what happens to me on earth if Christ can win some souls because of a little bit of hardship that I had to face or my family had to face?” O’Boyle said. “That’s worth it in droves.”
30 months and counting
O’Boyle, 38, of Waukesha County, Wis.,
continues to share more of his story of becoming a target of a weaponized FBI and Department of Justice. He just observed the 30-month anniversary of his suspension by the bureau based on probably false charges that he leaked information to Project Veritas. His security clearance was revoked in July 2024.
O’Boyle lost a dream promotion, his income, his home, his medical benefits, his peace of mind, and, ultimately, his unborn child due to miscarriage in March 2024. Such a journey would wilt and defeat many if not most others, but O’Boyle leans hard on his faith and regularly shares why Christ is the answer to it all.
“The Lord is using this for whatever His purposes are, even though we don’t necessarily understand them all the time,” O’Boyle said. “Who knows what the future will hold? This definitely will be a linchpin moment for all of us, and hopefully we can continue to deny self and point to the cross and say, ‘All right, I’m willing, Lord; use me even if it’s difficult.’ And this certainly has been difficult.”
Suspended FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle regularly shares his Christian faith when discussing his whistleblower case.Photo by Chris Duzynski for Blaze News
O’Boyle, the co-host with former FBI Special Agent Steve Friend of “The “
American Radicals Podcast,” shares a favorite scriptural reference on every episode. He has cited the Psalms, Genesis, the Old Testament prophets, and admonitions from St. Paul’s letters. He does similar things when appearing on other media, just as he did before a televised hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary in May 2023. Faith is the fabric from which O’Boyle is woven.
“I’ve thought about the biblical accounting of Joseph many times during the last 30 months,” he said. “It’s Genesis 50, verse 20.”
‘Who am I to be able to carry the banner of Christ?’
Joseph, the 11th son of Jacob and the firstborn of Rachel, was a favorite of his father as evidenced by a multicolored coat given to him. His envious brothers plotted to kill him but instead took his garment, sold him into slavery, and sent the coat back to Jacob soaked in animal blood. After Jacob’s death, the brothers came to Joseph, now a respected Egyptian official, seeking forgiveness.
And his brethren came to him: and worshipping prostrate on the ground they said: We are thy servants. And he answered them: Fear not: can we resist the will of God? You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that he might exalt me, as at present you see, and might save many people.
O’Boyle said he draws a powerful lesson from Joseph, that God will draw good even from the worst treachery.
“He tells them, ‘What you meant for evil, God meant for good,’” O’Boyle said. “And I rest in that a lot, because most of the time I don’t see the good, I don’t feel the good, I don’t hear about the good.”
O’Boyle said he has heard from people who saw him on social media or on broadcasts talking openly of his faith. That experience has been humbling.
“There have been a small handful of people who have already reached out, who’ve said, ‘I’m in a Bible study now. I can’t believe your faith. I opened my Bible again because of you.’ And I think, ‘Well, that’s not because of me,’” he said.
“That’s the Holy Spirit at work. That’s not Garret O’Boyle doing any of that,” he said. “It’s very humbling because it’s like, why would God bother with somebody like me? Who am I to be able to carry the banner of Christ and try to push that message forward? I’m nobody. And yet he’s put me in this position.”
Former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin (left) interviews suspended Special Agent Garret O’Boyle on the April 26, 2024, episode of “The Kyle Seraphin Show.” Both men are FBI whistleblowers.
Kyle Seraphin/Rumble, used with permission
O’Boyle, his wife, Heidi, and their four daughters have been on a long, nightmarish path since Sept. 26, 2022, when he walked into an FBI office in Virginia to start a new job. He was instead stripped of his gun and credentials and put on unpaid suspension following legally protected whistleblower disclosures he made to Congress.
The 22-page Empower Oversight letter provides a painfully detailed breakdown of O’Boyle’s case and the retaliation he and his attorneys say was visited upon him for standing up on issues like vaccine mandates, COVID testing with no religious accommodation, tracking the activities of local school board members, targeting pro-life activists as potential terrorists, inflating/padding of domestic terrorism cases, and many other issues. Empower Oversight represents O’Boyle in his case.
“It soon became clear that no one within FBI management or leadership took seriously his good-faith protected disclosures of FBI wrongdoing — much less investigated them, fixed the problems, or punished the wrongdoers,” wrote Empower Oversight founder Jason Foster. “Thus, starting in late 2021, SA O’Boyle began making protected disclosures to Congress concerning the politicization and weaponization of the FBI.”
‘Wow, they really screwed that guy.’
O’Boyle said he thought his case would have been resolved by now with the election of President Donald J. Trump and the confirmation of Kash Patel as FBI director. Patel was deeply familiar with the cases of O’Boyle and other FBI whistleblowers. His foundation helped O’Boyle — and others — with funds for Christmas just before O’Boyle’s FBI salary was cut off.
“I did not think it was going to take this long,” he said. “I didn’t think we were even going to have to submit this letter, to be honest. … I kind of go back and forth between hopeful and despondent, and I would say now I’m just apathetic. I’m not holding my breath on anything. I’m pretty disappointed at this point that there’s been such a lack of action.”
O’Boyle said that before his confirmation, Patel had indicated a desire to bring him and other victims of FBI weaponization back to the bureau.
‘There’s no clarity’
“We thought after Trump got elected that that would bring some clarity, but it hasn’t,” O’Boyle said. “And then we thought once Kash was confirmed, it would bring even more clarity. And it seemed like that’s the direction things we’re headed.
“But there’s no clarity still. We’ve got to get this monkey off our back before we can, one way or the other, before we can try to figure out what to do with the rest of our life.”
Even factoring in his personal bias in the case, O’Boyle said anyone who reads the Empower Oversight letter should come away understanding the injustice of the situation for him and his family.
“I don’t know how you read that and walk away and say, ‘That guy was wrong,’ and not the other way around where, ‘Wow, they really screwed that guy.’”
On March 20, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary,
wrote to Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging action to “right the ship.”
“My office has been told that, in many of these cases, the suspension of their security clearances resulted in immediate, indefinite suspensions without pay while the FBI improperly and intentionally delayed the process for these individuals to contest the adverse action,” Grassley wrote. “This tyrannical government conduct caused significant financial hardship.”
Garret O’Boyle embraces his wife, Heidi, and the youngest of their four daughters at their home in Waukesha County, Wis. O’Boyle said he laments the harm done to his wife and children by the FBI most of all.Photo by Chris Duzynski for Blaze News
O’Boyle said he tries to remain optimistic, but the continuing delays make it difficult to see justice reigning in his case.
“It seems like it’s so close and it seems like it’s such an easy right for them to do that,” he said. “I can almost taste it, like, ‘Okay, here we are at a potential outcome that I used to not even imagine, and now it’s so close,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, just make it right.’”
The FBI National Press Office told Blaze News that the bureau has no comment on O’Boyle’s case.
Despite the hell the case put him and his family through, O’Boyle says he does not regret his decision to fight to restore his name and his career.
‘That is going to take years to undo.’
“I vividly remember getting walked out of that FBI building, and I remember thinking, ‘I don’t care what it takes. I am going to fight this as long as I have to. Even if it means becoming entirely bankrupt, I’m going to fight this because this is wrong,’” he said. “And thankfully, Heidi agreed and bought in to that. Certainly it has come with struggle for us both, but we have remained consistent in that belief.”
O’Boyle acknowledges that Patel faces a herculean task to reform the FBI after years of political targeting of conservatives who stand up for the rule of law.
“Think of the cultural rot that has occurred at the FBI,” he said. “That’s not going to change in a few weeks because you got a new director and then a few weeks later a new deputy director. That is going to take years to undo.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Politics
