The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) allegedly used a threat tag it had initially created to track threats to the Supreme Court to focus on pro-life individuals, an FBI whistleblower told the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle, who worked from the Wichita Resident Agency in the Kansas City Field, said the threat tag, “THREATSTOSCOTUS2022.” which was made after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, was “legitimate” because “threatening a Supreme Court official is a violation of a federal crime,” according to portions of a transcripts of O’Boyle’s Feb. 10 interview with the panel, obtained first by Fox News.
O’Boyle said the threat tag soon “shifted and began focusing in on pro-life adherence,” according to the report.
“When this threat tag came out, it was like, why are you focusing on pro-life people?” O’Boyle’s transcript allegedly reads. “It’s pro-choice people who are the ones protesting or otherwise threatening violence in front of Supreme Court justices’ houses.”
O’Boyle said the FBI wanted agents to “look into” pro-life pregnancy centers, which he said he was confused by because pregnancy resource centers were more likely to receive threats following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, according to the report. O’Boyle also allegedly told the panel that he was instructed to ask a confidential human source, who he said was pro-life, “a bunch of questions about the threats to the Supreme Court.”
O’Boyle reportedly said “I do,” when the panel asked if he believe the FBI was creating threat tags in a politicized way, the report states. He also reportedly told the panel that the FBI had him divide one domestic terrorism case into “four different cases.”
“O’Boyle said the division of one case into multiple separate cases gave the FBI the opportunity to go to Congress and say, ‘look at all the domestic terrorism we’ve investigated,’” according to the report.
He claimed the the agency suspended him for making protected disclosures to Congress and said he was even prevented from gathering his personal belongings. O’Boyle told the panel the agency is “weaponized” against agents and anyone who tries to expose “malfeasance inside the agency prior to this.”
The FBI told Fox News Digital that the agency “[does] not conduct investigations based on a person’s political or social views.” The agency also said it had “no comment on particular threat tags” but noted that a tag is “merely a statistical tool to track information for review and reporting.”
“The creation of a threat tag in no way changes the long-standing requirements for opening an investigation, nor does it represent a shift in how the FBI prioritizes threats,” the agency told the outlet.
The FBI also denied that it “manipulated statistics on domestic terrorism,” said that it will “never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity,” and denied retaliating against whistleblowers.
The report notes that O’Boyle’s interview occurred as the subcommittee investigated whether federal law enforcement agencies were allegedly misusing domestic violent extremism resources for “political purposes.”
Merrick Garland says that the DOJ has prosecuted more pro-lifers for peaceful protests at abortion clinics than domestic terrorists firebombing pregnancy resource centers because the pro-lifers are doing it during the day and the centers are being bombed at night. pic.twitter.com/8abeyZiHLX
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 1, 2023
News of the whistleblower’s allegations also comes after United States Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted more pro-life activists than pro-abortion extremists following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs Decision, even though the FBI estimated that 70 percent of abortion-related violence was aimed at pregnancy resource centers and churches.
Garland blamed the timing of the alleged crimes for the prosecution discrepancy, claiming that pro-lifers have been easier to track because “those actions are taken with photography at the time, during the daylight, and seeing the person who did it is quite easy.”
“Those who are attacking the pregnancy resource centers, which is a horrid thing to do, are doing this at night, in the dark,” Garland told told Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) during a Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “We have put full resources on this. We have put rewards out for this. The Justice Department and the FBI have made outreach to Catholic and other organizations to ask for their help in identifying the people who are doing this.”
