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WASHINGTON (CN) — House Democrats sounded the alarm Tuesday about what they said was unusual coordination between congressional staff working in the office of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and the Justice Department on settlement agreements for fired FBI agents, who later received tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump administration.
But the top Republican has long said he merely “mediated” negotiations with the Justice Department on behalf of whistleblowers who had been treated unfairly.
In a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche dated Tuesday, Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin — the lead Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee — demanded information on millions of dollars in settlement payments doled out to nearly a dozen former FBI agents who he said were suspended, fired and had their security clearances revoked for criminal activity and other professional misconduct.
Raskin cited a handful of examples of former agency employees who had received significant payouts from the Trump administration, which he called “illegitimate settlements based solely on political loyalty to the President and baseless claims of ’weaponization.’”
Each of those fired agents, he said, was represented by Empower Oversight, a whistleblower advocacy group led and founded by former Grassley staffers. And Raskin added that Democrats had learned staff currently working for the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman had “participated” in settlement communications between the Justice Department, FBI and lawyers working for Empower Oversight.
The Maryland Democrat said the Justice Department and Grassley had “bypassed the findings of internal FBI reviews without making or publicizing any alternate findings of fact.” And a source familiar claimed to Courthouse News that it was highly unusual for congressional staff members to be involved in settlement negotiations.
Grassley, however, has long acknowledged he and his staff participated in discussions with the Justice Department and Empower Oversight about settlements for FBI agents who he has said were inappropriately suspended for blowing the whistle on “waste, fraud and abuse” under the Biden administration.
In an August 2025 statement celebrating some of those compensation agreements, Grassley’s office said the lawmaker and his team had “mediated” months of negotiations between the former FBI employees and the Justice Department. And in a letter sent by Empower Oversight to the top Senate Republican, the whistleblower advocacy group applauded the lawmaker’s approach to the issue “both publicly and behind the scenes.”
“Without your office, these brave whistleblowers would almost certainly not have received a fair hearing,” wrote Empower Oversight founder Jason Foster and President Tristan Leavitt.
Clare Slattery, a spokesperson for Grassley’s office, called Raskin’s letter to Blanche a “disgusting and defamatory attempt to smear legitimate whistleblowers” and said the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman stood by his efforts to “defend and protect all whistleblowers.”
Leavitt, a former Grassley staffer who worked as the senator’s chief whistleblower policy adviser, said in a statement that the House Democrat’s letter was “filled with shameless lies” about Empower Oversight clients.
“This letter is more a toddler’s temper tantrum than serious congressional oversight,” Leavitt told Courthouse News. “Empower Oversight has been transparent at every step about its case for making these whistleblowers whole, with hundreds of pages on our website documenting the flaws in FBI actions against these employees.”
Raskin argued Tuesday that the FBI employees in question had been reinstated or received settlement pay despite “significant misconduct.” In one instance, the lawmaker cited a former agent who had his security clearance suspended because he’d sent classified information to reporters about Chinese intelligence activity. The Justice Department, however, later restored his clearance and awarded him a $15,000 settlement.
“Why?” Raskin asked Blanche. “On what basis?”
In another settlement, a former agent had his security clearance returned after he failed to participate in an investigation into white nationalist group Patriot Front. During settlement negotiations, the top House Democrat said, it was revealed the agent had “engaged in commercial sex” while overseas on an official FBI assignment, conduct which he called “unequivocal grounds” for clearance revocation and dismissal.
The top House Democrat also pointed to the case of FBI Special Agent Steve Friend, who he said refused to participate in an agency arrest operation, illegally recorded conversations with his management team at the FBI, downloaded classified agency documents and participated in “unsanctioned interviews” with Russian state media. The Justice Department last summer reinstated him and gave him a lump sum payment of more than $61,000, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay.
Friend was fired again by the FBI in December for “unauthorized interactions with the media,” according to an agency letter reported by the New York Post.
And Raskin also cited a roughly $600,000 payout awarded to FBI Special Agent Garret O’Boyle, whose security clearance was revoked in 2024 after the lawmaker said he disclosed classified information on the agency’s criminal investigation into right-wing media organization Project Veritas.
“While Empower Oversight has brazenly described these scofflaws as ‘whistleblowers’ in press releases, none of them was ever disciplined for engaging in any purported ‘whistleblowing,’” the Maryland Democrat told Blanche.
Empower Oversight, for its part, has long held that its clients were subjected to unfair retaliation by the Justice Department for “telling the truth about wrongdoing,” and argued the former employees had been targeted for their political beliefs.
The organization vehemently rejected Raskin’s framing of events Tuesday. In a post on X, Foster accused the lawmaker of lying about the advocacy group’s clients and “hiding behind congressional immunity.” Empower Oversight disputed Raskin’s claims about some of the FBI officials it represented, such as O’Boyle — pointing to information from its website saying that the agency itself never said its former employee had disclosed classified information.
Leavitt, in a separate social media post, pushed back on claims in Raskin’s letter that the Justice Department reached a settlement with a former FBI agent who provided false information to investigators related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in which the lawmaker said the former employee participated. Leavitt pointed to an inspector general report, which he said concluded the agent in question did not make a false statement to investigators and that he “certainly did not” participate in the Capitol riot.
Empower Oversight’s response elicited a retort from House Judiciary Democrats, who, in a lengthy statement Tuesday evening, fired back that the organization was sowing “confusion” about the settlement agreements it negotiated.
“Let’s be clear about the disgraced FBI agents who received these corrupt settlements: All were disciplined for committing egregious misconduct; none were disciplined for protected disclosures or whistleblowing; and the cost to taxpayers of these corrupt ‘settlements’ is $3 million plus,” said a spokesperson for the committee’s Democratic minority. “Empower Oversight claims their press release about these settlements was ‘transparent.’ It was not.”
The Justice Department did not return a request for comment.
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