WASHINGTON, DC - Law Enforcement Today was contacted by the wife of a special agent with the FBI, who informed us that her husband, also a military veteran, was being discriminated against by the agency after being rated as a disabled veteran, and the agency was violating whistleblower protections in doing so.
Emily Fertitta’s husband, Valentine ("Val"), is an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve with 27 years of service, including multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is rated as a disabled veteran due to exposure to a blast during his 2004 deployment, which killed a fellow Marine EOD technician and seriously wounded another.
Val applied for a promotion in 2021, however, due to absences for combat-related testing and treatment, he, along with a female agent in her ninth month of pregnancy, was denied the opportunity to even apply in violation of FBI policy, and the EEO Act of 1972 and the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). Upon reporting the violations of FBI policy and law, retaliation was immediate.
Emily informed us that Val attempted to halt the ongoing retaliation through the internal resolution mechanisms of the FBI and DOJ, which included the DOJ’s secretive Whistleblower Protection Court. Immediately after filing his whistleblower complaint with the Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management (OARM) Court, the FBI classified Val as an “insider threat," allowing the FBI’s SecD to initiate a “national security” investigation against him, jeopardizing his Top Secret security clearance. The situation quickly shifted from pursuing a promotion to simply stopping the retaliation. With no other options available, Val filed a discrimination lawsuit against the FBI in December 2022.
Since then, Val has been subjected to “repeated and escalating” retaliation from the FBI's regional and national leadership. That retaliation included adverse performance reviews, and a change in duty assignment to an office nearly 50 miles away from Emily and their children.
As further evidence of retaliation, the FBI notified Emily that it was conducting a “national security” investigation into Val based on information provided to SecD by the FBI supervisors named in Val’s lawsuit. Emily informed us that the FBI employs so-called “excepted status” to systemize retaliation against anyone questioning the FBI leadership at any level.
The 2020 preventative health assessment that led to all of this uncovered a “potentially life-threatening condition” related to the exposure to blast that occurred 16 years earlier in Iraq. Fortunately, Val overcame the condition however, testing and treatment saw him absent from work for 30 cumulative days.
Upon returning to work, Val applied for and was denied the opportunity to apply for promotion to relief supervisor, a “stepping stone” position that allows an agent to compete for the supervisory special agent position. Equally disturbing, a pregnant female agent was also blocked from applying for the position, a flagrant violation of FBI policy and federal law. Emily said it appeared clear that Val was being discriminated against for his service-related injury.
Emily said Val attempted to rectify the situation through first and second-line supervisors, who issued verbal threats to harm his career. After not getting relief through the chain of command, he escalated his concerns to the first Senior Executive Service (SES) in his chain of command, the division's Special Agent in Charge (SAC), seeking relief. Another FBI supervisor later overheard this same SES make a statement to the effect, “We cannot be seen as rewarding those that complain”.
After seeking relief through his chain of command, Val began to experience “blatantly retaliatory acts,” Emily told LET, including the aforementioned adverse performance reviews, the first time this had occurred in his career. Emily told us Val had received multiple awards both in the military and as an FBI agent. In fact he received FBI performance awards every year for four years until making the complaint. To make matters worse, the adverse performance report was classified as “SECRET/NO FOREIGN,” which restricted it, making it harder to challenge.
Emily said Val then exercised his standing under EEO and USERRA and contacted the FBI’s EEO office for help. That office directed him to file a complaint with the Department of Labor. Ironically, the FBI’s EEO office was unaware that the FBI is one of only two federal agencies exempt from oversight by the Department of Labor regarding USERRA. The FBI later used the delay facilitated by this erroneous information to attempt to dismiss Val’s complaint under a “timeliness” issue.
Thus began a circular chain of events. Val was referred back and forth between the DOJ Office of the Inspector General and the FBI, with the DOJ failing to exercise its oversight function of the FBI. The FBI’s Office of Military Affairs claimed it never received a USERRA complaint and had no jurisdiction to prescribe corrective action even if it had.
The complaint was resolved late in 2021 when Val participated in the EEO Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) process, a form of mediation in which both parties are brought together to achieve a resolution. Emily said that the situation appeared corrected; however, a “little-known and narrow policy interpretation” stripped the position granted by the ADR.
After the ADR decision, the FBI retaliated against Val by changing his geographic assignment to a location nearly 50 miles away, creating a hardship for their family, Emily said. She said that while Val “had the promotion on paper…in reality, he could never serve in the position.”
Emily said that in November 2021, Val was forced to file a formal EEO complaint with the DOJ. Only days after filing the complaint, the FBI ordered him to “grant them full and unlimited access” to Val’s Department of Veterans Affairs medical records, an apparent violation of HIPAA. He was also ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation, which questioned his ability to hold a security clearance and perform law enforcement activities.
However, only two months before his EEO complaint, Val passed an FBI Fit for Duty physical exam. Emily said this amounted to nothing less than a fishing expedition seeking to suspend her husband’s security clearance. Emily said her husband was actually told by a senior FBI agent who was aware of what was playing out that “they will hurt you” if you continue pushing the issue.
That came in September 2023, when while on military leave of absence from the FBI and serving on active duty in the Marine Corps, Val was called to a meeting with FBI officials from Headquarters in Washington, DC. He took annual leave from the military and went to the meeting. On arrival, Emily said, Val was sandbagged into appearing for an investigative interview, was told he could not leave without facing loss of clearance or disciplinary action, was stripped of the right to counsel (5th Amendment), and was forced to answer questions relevant to his civil lawsuit against the FBI/DOJ. Additionally, it appeared the FBI SecD investigators violated FBI policy by not coordinating Val’s interview on national security grounds with the Department of Defense, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) as required by FBI/DoD memorandums of understanding and FBI policy.
Emily said Val requested the interview be recorded, however, he was told that recording was “prohibited by policy,” a policy they could not or would not cite. It was during that interview, Emily said, that her husband was advised the SES named in his federal lawsuit “referred multiple allegations of misconduct” to the FBI’s Security Division (SecD). Emily said that misconduct allegations of such nature are typically handled by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. There, an open investigation can occur, and the employee has a right to counsel and appeal.
Emily said that when the FBI questioned Val’s suitability for a clearance, he held a Department of Defense (DOD) clearance of equal standing with his FBI clearance under U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) policy. Unlike civilian employers, military officials have full and unlimited access to service members' medical records. Ironically, the DOD had no similar questions about her husband’s suitability for a TS clearance.
As part of the standard requirements of his DoD clearance, Val was administered a polygraph by NCIS in December of 2023. This polygraph asked questions directly relevant to the accusations of misconduct by SecD. NCIS polygraphers found no indications of deception or wrongdoing by Val, yet the FBI refused to acknowledge the findings of the polygraph.
The timing of the SES allegations is clearly suspect. They were filed only after Val filed his EEO lawsuit, not in 2021, when the alleged misconduct occurred.
The FBI also uses what are described as known “glitches” in FBI information systems and other job-related requirements to assemble “misconduct” charges. In one absurd instance, the agency requires signing a “mobility agreement,” which requires FBI agents to move to meet the “needs of the Bureau.” Similarly, service in the Marine Corps, “an expeditionary force”, requires moves. Emily said they bought or sold eight homes over the last 20 years due to the combined required moves due to either the Marine Corps or the FBI. The FBI used that policy to accuse Val of having a “house flipping” business, violating the FBI/DOJ policy (a policy they could not produce).
Of course, none of that has anything to do with national security. Conflating issues raised by Val with “national security " severely hampers his ability to produce documentation of policy and legal violations by FBI managers. Moreover, witnesses interviewed about the case are warned they cannot discuss the events or documents due to the ongoing “national security investigation.”
Val wasn’t the only member of the Fertitta family to face the FBI's wrath. Emily said that on May 16, 2024, the FBI ordered her to report to FBI Headquarters (under threat of disciplinary action and/or loss of her security clearance) for 16 hours of compelled interviews related to a “national security investigation” into her husband. At the time, Emily served as a special agent for the FBI.
Emily said she faced the same circumstances as her husband–no right to an attorney, no spousal privileges, the interview would not be recorded, and she couldn’t tell anyone about the interview–including her supervisors. That, Emily said, stripped her of her ability to report what was clearly a retaliatory act. When she requested under what policy or legal authority the coerced interview was being conducted, the investigators couldn’t or wouldn’t cite either.
Emily recognized the tactics being used by SecD mirrored a known method used to gain leverage over suspects. That is the investigator interviews two people separately about the same event. When one person says “small dog,” whereas the other says “puppy,” an accusation of “lying to a government official” or “lack of candor is made”. The case of General Flynn indeed highlights how damning such an accusation can be. To Emily said, it was clear the goal was “intimidation against following through with the EEO lawsuit.”
It appears clear that the FBI's actions under former Director Christopher Wray were retaliatory in nature and violated the agency’s whistleblower policy. In fact, Emily said the FBI imposed eight of nine categories of retaliatory acts in the three years after Val reported his supervisor’s policy violation, concealed under the veil of “national security.” Before Emily resigned from the FBI, she and Val were assigned to offices 1700 miles apart.
The Fertittas have suffered more than $200,000 in lost wages, legal bills, and other expenses to adjudicate Val’s case, which should be protected under federal whistleblower protections. The FBI also leverages the very agency that is supposed to affirm whistleblower rights–the DOJ Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management, which Emily said “is designed to wear out and deplete the resources of the employee while the FBI/DOJ attorneys use the discovery process to attempt to identify any FBI employee who may be supportive or helpful to” them. The FBI’s discovery efforts “included demands…to list, by name, every Member of Congress, and their staffers,” the Fertitta’s “had ever met with and provide them with copies of any documents” provided to Congress.
If the FBI can do this to two people who have collectively served our nation for over 46 years, what is to stop them from doing it to anyone? In Val's case, the very same year he received an award from the National Intelligence Foundation for his “selfless dedication to duty and significant contributions to the USIC,” the FBI called him an “insider threat.”
Moreover, he has been nominated by fellow FBI employees for the FBI’s Award for Valor for saving two people from drowning in the ocean just last September. The two, caught in a riptide, were saved by Val and another person in ocean conditions that saw three other people killed on the same beach just hours later.
Sadly, the culture of retaliation experienced by the Fertittas is nothing new or unusual. Emily told LET that it stems from the FBI's core culture. FBI managers know they will never have to answer for their actions, and, as Emily said her husband told her, no military commander could conduct themselves in the manner of FBI supervisors and keep their position. FBI supervisors retaliate with impunity.
Emily told us that there are many cases where the FBI discriminated against or retaliated against so-called whistleblowers. Sadly, some of those cases involve veterans. In one case, she told of an Army Ranger, Justin Slaby, who attended the FBI Academy with her husband. He was pulled from training and relegated to an administrative position, which was a pretext for forcing him to quit. When a federal lawsuit was filed, at the SES level, the FBI attempted to force the FBI agent who monitored Slaby’s fitness test and approved him for the academy, Mark Crider, to rescind such approval. He refused, and the FBI retaliated against him. Slaby won his lawsuit and now works as a supervisor (a successful one at that) for the FBI. In that case, as in Val’s, the DOJ refused to perform oversight and allowed the FBI to retaliate against Crider while also aiding the FBI’s discrimination against Slaby.
In another case, William and Alyson Berry were assigned to a remote FBI office, otherwise known as a Resident Agency (RA). This office was labeled a “hardship” office by the FBI’s Human Resources Department. After serving two years in such an office, agents can move to their chosen office. Important to note is that William Berry was the only black agent serving in the RA. Berry said he was subject to years of discrimination by his supervisor (who didn’t believe blacks and whites should marry–Alyson Berry is white), or for that matter, for women to be in law enforcement. William Berry filed an EEO complaint against his supervisor and the FBI.
Moreover, the FBI supervisor named in Berry’s complaint manipulated facts to sustain misconduct charges against William Berry for events that allegedly occurred two years before. Despite two internal FBI misconduct investigations, he was found to have done nothing wrong. The FBI leadership at the FBI headquarters gave him a 60-day suspension without pay.
An FBI internal EEO investigation corroborated some of Berry’s allegations that his supervisor made multiple bigoted statements, which occurred before the FBI EEO investigation. Berry left the FBI and filed a federal civil rights lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq).
The Fertitta’s case was scheduled to be heard in May of 2025 however, in December 2024, just prior to the depositions of senior FBI leaders, the FBI asserted “national security” privilege to delay the case indefinitely. This was after an FBI SecD analyst confirmed in an FBI report that there was no CLASSIFIED material at issue.
The Fertittas have attempted every method put in place by the FBI and federal law to resolve this case. This month, Emily Fertitta’s husband sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi asking them to stop the misuse of national security authorities by the FBI and DOJ to conceal misconduct by senior FBI leaders.
The letter particularly called out Percy Giles, the FBI manager most responsible for the misuse of national security authorities in harassing the Fertittas. Ironically, Giles was the Acting Special Agent in Charge of the New Orleans Division of the FBI when the office falsely claimed the New Year's Day attack in downtown New Orleans was not a terrorist attack.
President Trump, Kash Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi have promised to eradicate the FBI and DOJ of incompetence, failing to obey the Constitution and failing to protect the American people.
It is hopeful that with “new sheriffs in town” in the persons of Trump, Bondi, Patel, and newly-appointed FBI Assistant Director Dan Bongino, the embedded stink inside the FBI can be eradicated, and the Fertitta’s and other agents who suffered under the Biden/Garland/Wray regime can be vindicated.
The allegations made by the Fertittas can be found in the Federal complaint, Fertitta v. Garland, Civ. 22-966 GJF/SCY.
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