ACLJ's Appeal of FBI Special Agent Garret O'Boyle To Proceed to the Merits
As we’ve reported, the ACLJ represents FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle in his whistleblower lawsuit against the FBI. We had filed an appeal for O’Boyle at the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and now we have an important and welcome update in this monumental legal battle.
Soon after we filed the appeal, the FBI filed a motion to dismiss. The FBI adamantly wanted to prevent the federal appellate court from even hearing the merits of our arguments on O’Boyle’s behalf; and if the court had granted the FBI’s motion, that is what would have happened. The court, however, just set the FBI’s motion to dismiss aside and directed that we proceed to brief the merits of the case. This procedural development is a critical win in our mission to have O’Boyle’s case heard. In essence, the D.C. Circuit has suggested this important case deserves careful review on the merits.
You will recall that O’Boyle is one of the whistleblowers who bravely testified before Congress about wide-ranging Deep State corruption within the agency, ranging from targeting pro-lifers to concerned parents of students as if they were threats.
He made headlines with his chilling statement:
The FBI will crush you. This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing that are wrong. And we are all examples of that.
As we said before, for daring to stand up and speak the truth, the Biden Administration made “O’Boyle’s life a nightmare, bringing down the full force of malicious Deep State retribution against him for standing up for the truth and exposing the rampant corruption and political bias infecting our federal government.”
In this case, O’Boyle has been suspended without pay for over a year – and forbidden to find employment elsewhere. In our previous report, we explained:
This brave FBI whistleblower has been indefinitely suspended without pay after the FBI indefinitely suspended his security clearance in September 2022. The administrative law judge who reviewed his claim was ostensibly prevented by antiquated jurisprudence (Dep’t of the Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 530-31 (1988) and its progeny), which is unfortunately still on the books, from looking at the actual underlying reason his clearance was suspended in the first place, i.e., whether the suspension was unlawful retaliation by the FBI for Garret’s whistleblowing. An Article III court will not review his claim until his administrative remedies are exhausted, which, thus far, has taken almost a year.
That is a year without pay for a man trying to feed his family and pay the bills.
In other words, the FBI is allowed to indefinitely suspend the security clearance of a whistleblower, then suspend them without pay for lacking a clearance, with no real judicial review for at least a year – essentially circumventing the whistleblower protection laws enacted by Congress and the whistleblower’s due process rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.
This application of the law disincentivizes federal whistleblowers at a time when we need whistleblowers, especially at the FBI, DOJ, and IRS, more than ever.
That last part is a key aspect of why O’Boyle’s case is so important on a national scale. But please do not overlook how important his case is to him and his family.
In response to the welcome news from the court, O’Boyle had this to say:
I’m beyond blessed to have such a smart, determined and justice-seeking legal team from both the ACLJ and Binnall Law Group. King Solomon has said that, “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” I'm joyful and humbled to have such a powerful legal team behind me seeking justice on my behalf. The FBI continues to try and crush me and my family, but we aren’t crushed yet. They sought to skirt around the merits of our case and avoid justice because they are terrified of the truth being revealed. I’m also grateful for the court’s ability to see through this charade coming from an agency who claims to stand for “Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity,” yet spit in the face of those noble qualities when its own employees expose their wrongdoing in legally protected fashion to Congress.
You can read more about our representation of O’Boyle here. You can watch his interview on our radio program here.
If you haven’t already, now is your chance to stand with us as we stand with O’Boyle along with our friends at the Binnall Law Group. Be a part of helping to give him his day in court. Honor his bravery and sacrifice. Join his cause.