Garret O’Boyle and Steve Friend, two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistleblowers, have been reinstated alongside FBI whistleblower Zachery Schoffstall after President Donald Trump’s administration agreed to a settlement with 10 whistleblowers.
According to The New York Post, O’Boyle and Friend were suspended from the FBI after testifying to Congress regarding political weaponization at the agency under former President Joe Biden’s administration. The Post Millennial reported that O’Boyle, Friend, and other FBI whistleblowers testified that the agency was monitoring conservative American parents who presented concerns at school board meetings and that the agency was inappropriately working with Bank of America.
In 2023, O’Boyle told congressional lawmakers, “I am sad, I am disappointed, and I am angry that I have to be here to testify about the weaponization of the FBI and DOJ.”
O’Boyle, who served in the U.S. Army prior to becoming a police officer and an FBI special agent, told Congress that he was “wrongfully suspended” from the FBI after being “smeared as a malcontent and subpar FBI employee.”
At the time, the whistleblower, who was accused of improperly accessing files and leaking information pertaining to an investigation to Project Veritas, added, “They see what becomes of whistleblowers; how the FBI destroys their careers, suspends them under false pretenses, takes their security clearances and pay with no true options for real recourse.”
The New York Post reported that Friend had his security clearance revoked and was suspended without pay after he presented concerns regarding the FBI’s handling of January 6 cases, specifically with regard to the way SWAT teams were used by the Biden administration.
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In a Tuesday press release, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary announced that 10 FBI whistleblowers received compensation agreements with the FBI following negotiations mediated by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The committee noted that the whistleblowers had been “subjected to demotions, security clearance revocation and indefinite unpaid administrative leave as a result of reporting waste, fraud and abuse during the last administration.”
“Whistleblowers risk it all for the sake of simply telling the truth,” Grassley stated in Tuesday’s press release. “These 10 whistleblowers’ brave actions were met with intense bureaucratic blowback that caused severe financial and emotional hardship. Their lives were upended for years, but I never stopped fighting until things were made right.”
Tuesday’s press release noted that O’Boyle, Friend, and Schoffstall would be reinstated at the FBI following the successful settlement with the Trump administration.
“FBI Whistleblowers Garrett O’Boyle and Steve Friend have been REINSTATED,” Journalist Breanna Morello tweeted on Tuesday. “Thank you to Director Kash Patel, Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Empower Oversight, and Senator Chuck [Grassley] for making this happen.”
