One of the FBI whistleblowers touted by Republican House members as providing information showing partisanship in Bureau investigations had been disciplined by the Bureau for giving sensitive, confidential information to the right-wing propaganda outlet Project Veritas without authorization, NBC News reports.

During his testimony before the Jim Jordan-led witchhunt “weaponization” subcommittee that is incuriously not looking into how former Attorney General Bill Barr blocked investigations into Donald Trump’s misdeeds, Garret O’Boyle said under oath that the reason he was suspended was for his political views, not for any other breach of Bureau rules, regulations or laws such as authorized contact with the media.  Per the transcript during an interchange with a jacketless Jordan:

Jordan: Okay. But you did speak to the media?

O’Boyle: Not prior to being suspended, no.

Jordan: Okay. So your testimony is that you never spoke to the media, that it was entirely false, what was in the suspension notice that you were handed?

O’Boyle: Correct.

However, an internal FBI investigation into the interview, which Project Veritas posted online in May 2022, determined O’Boyle was indeed the source.  Jennifer Moore, executive assistant director of the FBI for human resources, testified investigators determined that O’Boyle had not just given the interview to Project Veritas, but had also copied sensitive information relating to an ongoing investigation from FBI computer systems and given it to the right-wing group.  O’Boyle was suspended in September, after the internal investigation.

“There was a level of urgency because of the identity of the individual, and it appeared that he was still accessing case files and information that he wasn’t authorized to have access to and disclosing it because we had seen information obviously in public forums,” Moore testified.