Foster and Leavitt say they are not political activists, but supporters of anyone who speaks out against government misconduct.
Leavitt notes that he was appointed by President Biden to serve on the Merit Systems Protection Board, which adjudicates federal employment disputes. Both men say they have spent a career working with nonpartisan good governance groups, and have received praise in that community.
Foster and Leavitt point out that other Washington groups supporting whistleblowers include former Democratic legislative staffers.
“There is nothing wrong with working for Republicans or Democrats on Capitol Hill and then working in the nonpartisan, nonprofit sector,” they said. “There are a large number of people on both sides of the aisle doing it.”
A former Republican majority staffer on the House Oversight Committee from 2015 to 2017, Leavitt also worked for Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa on the Judiciary Committee from 2011 to 2015, and for Bill Sali, a far-right Republican lawmaker of Idaho from 2007 to 2011.
Foster spent two decades working for congressional Republicans, rising to lead counsel under Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As ProPublica reported, he once published an anonymous blog under the moniker «extremist» who equated homosexuality with incest and questioned whether waterboarding really amounted to torture. (He later apologized for the posts.)
In response to a question about the blog, Foster said ProPublica’s descriptions «were not accurate, fair, or representative summaries of the publications.»
“And the ident was a tongue-in-cheek, tongue-in-cheek reaction to the hysterical labeling of leading center-right figures (particularly Chief Justice Roberts in the case that led to the ident being used for a while) as extremists when they clearly weren’t. he added.
More recently, Foster has He suggested that Hunter Biden should be prosecuted for his work as a well-paid member of the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company.
Both Leavitt and Foster have often made careers investigating Democrats.
In his Empower Oversight Biography, Foster cites his work on the «Fast and Furious» gun scandal in the Obama administration and exposing flaws in the Trump-Russia investigation. About his LinkedIn pageLeavitt says he investigated «Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while no charges were recommended by the Secretary of State and the FBI» and «led an investigation into conflicts of interest caused by Hillary Clinton’s fundraising for the political campaign of the deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe’s wife.
By supporting FBI whistleblowers, Leavitt and Foster have found an ally in former Trump adviser Kash Patel, who Congress says testimony has donated to at least one of the FBI agents and to Kyle Serafin, another former FBI agent turned critic who posted photos of $255,000 checks made out to two of the men on Twitter. Patel raised the money through a GiveSendGo campaign, a conservative version of GoFundMe. One of the agents, suspended but still employed by the FBI, has said that he is consulting lawyers about whether he can accept the money.
One of the FBI whistleblowers, Stephen Friend, has accepted a job at the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank founded by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.
According to federal tax forms 990, you share a record address and have received $500,000 from the Institute of Conservative Association, a right-wing advocacy group led by Meadows and former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina. The institute also employs Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who has supported Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
In February, the institute hosted a “Congressional Oversight Boot Camp” for Republican Hill staff. Leavitt, while still a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, spoke on a panel titled «Working with Outside Research Organizations,» according to records submitted to the Secretary of the Chamber.
Two weeks later, Leavitt left the board to become president of Empower Oversight.
Dent says that questions about the extent to which Hunter Biden benefited from attractive deals (NBC News reported that a Ukrainian energy company and a Chinese businessman paid him $11 million over five years) are legitimate.
But, he said, “the more ideologically enthusiastic members of the caucus (GOP) tend to overreach. They will always grab more than they can chew, and I suspect that is what may be happening here as well.»