Empower Oversight
Description
Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research (EMPOWR) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization. It works to strengthen independent oversight of wrongdoing inside government and corporations. It helps insiders document and report corruption to the proper authorities. It also works to hold those authorities accountable for acting on the reports they receive.
Its stated premise is that in a constitutional republic, power resides with the people, exercised through elected representatives. The people and their representatives need accurate facts to check unelected bureaucrats and corporate elites. EMPOWR solicits disclosures of waste, fraud, abuse, misconduct and mismanagement. It works to corroborate whistleblower claims through independent research and helps insiders safely and legally inform authorities, the media and the public.
It also educates whistleblowers, journalists, members of Congress, inspectors general and other institutions responsible for public integrity. It advocates for more effective oversight and whistleblower-driven investigations.
The organization is led by Tristan Leavitt, its President, who previously worked in Congress, at the US Office of Special Counsel and at the US Merit Systems Protection Board. It is also led by Jason Foster, its Founder and Chairman, who spent 22 years on Capitol Hill, including 14 years as counsel to Senator Chuck Grassley. Foster continues to lead pressure campaigns on behalf of people who report wrongdoing.
Latest news
House Oversight Opens Investigation Into Federal Fentanyl Policy
Empower Oversight president Tristan Leavitt made the following statement after Chairman James Comer announced an investigation into the Drug Enforcement Administration’s walking of fentanyl and the policy that allowed it. Empower Oversight represents the whistleblower, DEA Special Agent David...
31 Aug 2026WASHINGTON, D.C. – Empower Oversight today filed a whistleblower referral with the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of Natasha Steward, a Medical Case Manager at the AIDS Task Force of the Upper Ohio Valley, Inc. (ATFUOV), a nonprofit AIDS service...
26 Aug 2026Third DEA Agent Comes Forward in Fentanyl Walking Case with Evidence of Retaliation
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Empower Oversight sent a letter to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) asking it to investigate a series of retaliatory personnel actions taken against a third Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) whistleblower in the agency’s Albuquerque District Office, expanding the...
5 Aug 2026Empower Oversight today sent two letters to Department of Justice (DOJ) Assistant Inspector General Sean O’Neill, expanding its work on behalf of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) whistleblower Special Agent (SA) David Howell and asking the Justice Department’s watchdog to open a new...
16 Jul 2026An AP investigation released today revealed that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Albuquerque District Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico routinely “walked” fentanyl shipments from at least 2023 to March 2025, standing down even as agents watched...
22 Jun 2026New Report Vindicates Whistleblower WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Office of Special Counsel today released a report confirming protected disclosures by Department of Education whistleblower Timothy Mattson, represented by Empower Oversight, that the Department’s Office of Civil Rights unlawfully...
10 Jun 2026
Similar organizations
The Ligue des droits de l'Homme, LDH, is a French human rights organization.
Blueprint for Free Speech is a non-profit charity that works internationally to promote the right to freedom of expression.
Psst is a non-partisan, non-profit public service. It helps people bring forward public interest information without having to become a full whistleblower.