Even the FBI must answer to DOGE.
As Kash Patel moves forward in his confirmation process this week, the agency he is poised to lead is in the midst of upheaval. The Office of Personnel Management ordered the law enforcement agency last week to submit a list of 1,000 relatively new special agents who are still on their first- or second-year probationary periods, according to a person familiar with the details.
It’s only the latest hit to the FBI, which is under attack from the outside by Fox News hosts, congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump — and likely soon from the inside should Patel be confirmed. Within the first month of Trump’s presidency, the White House purged top agency leaders and circumvented the FBI in the security clearance process, and FBI agents had to go to court to ensure the administration wouldn’t put their safety at risk.
And while the bureau is considered a “component” of the Justice Department, the recent effort by acting Deputy Attorney General and former Trump personal defense lawyer Emil Bove to track down and identify every employee who ever touched a Jan. 6 insurrection investigation has driven a wedge between the DOJ and the FBI.
“This is just unprecedented,” said one former FBI special agent who left during the previous administration and is in contact with current staff. “We’ve always been nonpolitical. Here you have this politics just punching us in the face.”
The former employee said that “everybody is just anxious and in disbelief” at the Baltimore Field Office — which, given its proximity to Washington, shared some of the burden of investigating the attack at the Capitol. “There’s this kind of raw tension,” they said.
The FBI Agents Association, which represents 14,000 of the bureau’s active and retired investigators, sent a letter last Wednesday to congressional leaders stressing that — while it “fully supports efforts to improve efficiency within the federal government … such improvements should not compromise public safety.”
“Right now, Special Agents in probationary status are risking their lives in locations spread across the country to serve warrants, conduct surveillance on gangs and narcotics traffickers, stop threats to national security, and protect vulnerable populations from predators. Displacing these rank-and-file public servants would create a gap in the FBI workforce that could be devastating to the FBI’s mission — one that would take approximately twenty years to fill with new Special Agents,” the group warned.
To bolster its argument, the association pointed to what it said was the cost of conducting the rigorous background check and 20 weeks of academy training: $300,000 per agent, meaning that the American public’s $300 million investment would vanish instantaneously if these new recruits were forced out.
Two recent lawsuits by the FBI Agents Association and a group of nearly a dozen anonymous FBI employees against the DOJ — one seeking to halt Trump appointees from identifying, punishing and potentially publicizing the names of personnel that worked on Jan. 6-related cases — have only added to that growing tension. Pamela Keith, a D.C. attorney who represents employees in that pending class-action lawsuit, said her clients are worried about how quickly the Trump administration is seeking to make changes at the bureau that could harm its ongoing investigations.
“They’re demoralized and extremely afraid,” she said. “My clients are not partisan. They didn’t really talk to me about Patel. But they did worry dramatically about the loss of independence of the FBI.”
The FBI Agents Association said that in its meeting with Patel, he promised that “agents would not face retribution for carrying out their lawful duties,” but the group has expressed that publicly exposing employee names would contradict that commitment.
Keith was particularly aggrieved at the Justice Department’s initial reluctance in court to assert that the Trump administration would not release the names of FBI agents who could face retribution for working on insurrection cases. She also said her clients, which include agents and support staff, are concerned about the way Trump has installed loyalists to oversee the DOJ and FBI — creating a direct channel from the White House to a massive domestic intelligence infrastructure that could empower the president to make good on his vow to seek revenge against perceived political enemies.
“By putting Kash atop the FBI, Donald Trump is inserting himself into the intelligence community ... the same thing Erdogan and Putin does. It is zenith textbook authoritarianism and fascism,” Keith told NOTUS, referring to the leaders of Turkey and Russia.
Keith also raised alarms over the White House’s fast-tracked security clearances. The administration had plans to forgo the traditional FBI background checks for several of its White House appointees, according to several reports before the start of the administration, and a senior Democrat last month demanded to know more about appointments while citing the dangers of “inappropriate and unauthorized access to or disclosure of” top secret information.
“I don’t think the American people are cognizant of the checks for our security that are being obliterated,” she said.
Another concern being voiced by former agents who recently left the FBI is whether the bureau will continue to monitor the activities of the recently pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Three described the tension now faced by squads that focus on counter extremism, in which typical FBI protocol would have them surveil militant right-wing organizations like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers — but doing so could also be perceived by new DOJ leadership as a political mission that violates the privacy or First Amendment rights of these ex-convicts, whom the White House has viewed approvingly.
Several government lawyers who were recently fired over their roles in Jan. 6-related prosecutions told NOTUS they had quietly reached out to FBI agents they worked with on those cases to express their condolences — but also feared that by reaching to them they would be putting a target on the agents’ backs by creating a record of phone calls and text messages.
Not all former agents are wary of the sudden personnel changes at the FBI. One told NOTUS that the bureau was due for a “shake up” after years of elevating supervisors who were perceived as “too political” and driven by personal ambition. This former special agent, who worked in New Jersey, said they actually welcomed Patel’s stated intention to shift law enforcement personnel away from the bureau’s D.C. headquarters and out to field offices across the country.
“I don’t think there’s any need to have the bureau anywhere near D.C. It takes away the ability to be impartial. Your kids are playing little league with a senator’s kids, or somebody on the House’s kids. You’re in social groups. It just doesn’t make sense. If you want to be truly independent from any political influence, you have to be out of D.C.,” they said.
However, they lamented that the current administration appears to be shifting FBI resources toward Trump’s top priority: immigration. This person, and two other former FBI agents, cited the Justice Department’s recent decision to drop its corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams as a sign that new DOJ leadership is in fact injecting more politics into law enforcement activities rather than siphoning it out.
“This thing is distracting from real work that needs to get done. These ICE raids are a show,” one said. “The bureau is taking their eye off the ball on the things that really matter. The fact that Eric Adams got off? That’s about as solid a case as you’ve ever got.”
“The next 9/11 is around the corner. The only reason nothing’s happened is because nobody’s tried,” they added.
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.