(Just The News) FBI officials conducting a top-secret security clearance review for a longtime employee asked witnesses whether that employee was known to support former President Donald Trump, if he had expressed concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine or had attended a Second Amendment rally, according to internal memos that prompted a complaint to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog alleging political bias inside the bureau.
The employee’s security clearance was revoked months after the interviews, which confirmed his support for Trump and gun rights and his concerns about the COVID vaccine, according to the documents obtained by Just the News.
The memos show that agents for the FBI’s Security Division asked at least three witnesses in spring 2022 whether the employee, whose name and job title was redacted from the memos, had been known to “vocalize support for President Trump” or “vocalize objections to Covid-19 vaccination.” Agents ascertained from at least one witness that the worker, in fact, had declined to get the coronavirus inoculation.
The latter questions about the vaccine were asked in spring 2022, a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down vaccine mandates in corporate workplaces and a separate federal court had issued an injunction on federal employee vaccine mandates.
The agents also asked witnesses whether the FBI worker had “attended the Richmond Lobby Day event” in January 2021, a rally for supporters of the Second Amendment in Virginia. The agents’ notes referred to the colleague they were vetting as a “gun nut” but who in engaged in “no promotion of violence.”
You can read the memos here:
FBI officials declined comment about why a worker’s support for Trump and the Second Amendment or his hesitancy to get the COVID-19 vaccine had relevance to his security clearance.
They also declined to answer whether similar questions about support for Joe Biden or other medical issues, such as a woman’s support for abortion.
