Federal investigators wanted felony charges against Tshibaka in employment case

Kelly Tshibaka could have faced federal prosecution after a year-long fraud investigation that concluded she had falsified her federal work records and worked 596 hours that she should not have been paid for between 2008 and 2011.

In a sermon Tshibaka gave in 2014 at the Washington, D.C. church she co-pastored with her husband, Niki Tshibaka, Kelly talked about allegations related to her job for the inspector general in the Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Tshibaka told her congregation that “friends” had falsely accused her, but did not mention that a separate federal entity, the National Reconnaissance Office, actually conducted the investigation. Here is a redacted version of its report on Tshibaka.

The topic of her 2014 sermon was on the value of waiting on the Lord, even when times are tough. She brought up what she claimed was the “bogus” fraud case against her as a specific.

“Waiting builds our resistance to despair and to all of the weapons the enemy would form against us. It makes us super Christians, super effective,” she said.

Below is a six-minute segment of the sermon in which Tshibaka talks about the federal investigation.

“You guys know, a lot of you know that I was under federal investigation. Some ‘friends’ of mine accused me falsely of committing fraud in the government and what should have been a conversation with my supervisor ended up being a year-long investigation that was horrific.”

“It got referred to prosecution and everything. It was at this point the worst time in our lives.”

“But God, but God gave me words like ‘wait for the Lord.’ He told me, ‘This is gonna end up with you in the lion’s den.’ I was like, ‘no, no, no, no, no. No we can’t go that far. I’m like, that’s made for stuff like Daniel, I’m Kelly. Let’s have a conversation here.”

“And one of the things, you might not know this, but I do internal affairs and so being accused of something in internal affairs it makes it even worse,” she said.

She said that when a federal employee is under investigation, if that employee leaves the federal government or changes agencies, “they almost always drop it.”

Tshibaka said she wanted to leave the job right away, but God told her that she should wait. She said that’s not what she wanted to hear.

“You’re telling me that I’m gonna end up thrown to the lions and this time you might not shut their mouths. You’re telling me that this is gonna go really bad when it really should just go easy. You’re telling me it’s gonna be an ordeal. And you’re telling me to just put up with it,” she said.

“He’s like, ‘Yeah,’” she said of God.

“And so we’ll fast forward and the people investigating me decided that I’d committed felony fraud. They referred it to a prosecutor. Prosecutor didn’t take it. They referred to management, so now you know I’m gonna be fired. And management says, ‘This is all ridiculous.’ And closes it, I mean literally shut the mouths of lions.”

The National Reconnaissance Office investigation did not put Tshibaka’s management in a good light, however, mentioning specifics in which officials said they did not know about what she was charging as comp time.

Tshibaka was transferred to another job in September 2011 in the same agency. At the time she told friends and wrote on her blog that her new job was one she really wanted.

But in her 2014 sermon, Tshibaka contradicted that claim. She said she wasn’t happy, having been moved to a cubicle down the hall. She said that God had told her she would be given a position with broader responsibilities.

“I found a quiet place at work where I could hide where I screamed out to God almost every day at work, ‘This is not broad. I don’t understand. Are you messing with me?”

She said she waited for two years when an old boss of hers called about a job that could put her back on the track that the investigation had knocked her off of. Six weeks later, in July 2013, she had a new job with the inspector general’s office of the Federal Trade Commission, with broader responsibilities.

Alaska voters are waiting to see the final report that Tshibaka says found the independent federal investigation of her “ridiculous” and led to her transfer to a job she didn't want.

Your contributions help support independent analysis and political commentary by Alaska reporter and author Dermot Cole. Thank you for reading and for your support. Either click here to use PayPal or send checks to: Dermot Cole, Box 10673, Fairbanks, AK 99710-0673