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November 30<\/p>\n
Three weeks after winning re-election, Trump named Patel as his nominee for F.B.I. director. On a podcast, Patel had promised to shut down bureau headquarters on his first day in the post and reopen it \u201cas a museum of the deep state.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kash Patel at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2024. Mark Peterson for The New York Times<\/p>\n
John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: I assumed Congress would see how uniquely unqualified Kash Patel was for the job. I assumed the Senate would do its due diligence and decide not to confirm him.<\/p>\n
Michael Feinberg, former assistant special agent in charge of the field office in Norfolk, Va.: When Kash Patel was nominated, we all knew in our bones that the bureau was going to be a very different environment than any of us had experienced before. He regularly referred to us as government gangsters. He was also the author of three children\u2019s books in which he\u2019s a self-styled wizard who saves King Donald Trump from the evil forces of the Justice Department.<\/p>\n
Michael Bovin, former intelligence analyst: A lot of people in the F.B.I. have faith in the country and in the job. They may come from police or military families. They think they\u2019re doing the right thing and it will all work out. And you know, there was a kernel of truth in what Patel was saying: There are too many people in headquarters. Let\u2019s get more people back into the field. <\/p>\n
Human-intelligence agent: I wanted the White House to succeed. For 20 years, I collected information for the president\u2019s daily briefing. I listened to Kash Patel on a podcast, and the way he viewed Jan. 6 aligned with the F.B.I. rank and file. Agents always thought if you assaulted officers on that day, yes, absolutely, we should investigate and prosecute you. For the rest of them, it was a massive misuse of resources.<\/p>\n
But then I heard Patel was thinking of a mass purge of the leadership and dismissing agents wholesale.<\/p>\n
January 20<\/p>\n
The Trump administration decided that until Patel was confirmed, the F.B.I.\u2019s acting director would be Rob Kissane, a veteran counterterrorism agent. The acting deputy director would be Brian Driscoll, the special agent in charge of the Newark field office. But in its announcement, the White House accidentally <\/a>named Driscoll to the top position. Though it was an error, Driscoll became the acting No. 1 and Kissane became the No. 2.<\/p>\n Jacqueline Maguire, former executive assistant director: The White House reversing the announcement added to this uncertain, uncomfortable feeling \u2014 it doesn\u2019t bode well if they didn\u2019t get that right. But I\u2019ve known Brian and Rob a long time, and some of the other executive assistant directors did as well. We\u2019d all grown up in the bureau, and we wanted to work together.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said we were being fired because we could not be trusted to carry out the president\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n Jacqueline Maguire, former executive assistant director<\/p>\n January 30-31<\/p>\n At his Senate confirmation hearing, Patel was asked whether he would fire the F.B.I. agents who worked on the investigations that led to the special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s prosecution of Trump. Patel responded that \u201cno one will be terminated for case assignments.\u201d Later in the hearing, he also promised there would be \u201cno retributive actions\u201d against employees. <\/p>\n The next day, Trump administration officials, including Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general and Trump\u2019s former defense attorney, forced out the bureau\u2019s top six executives, along with the heads of the F.B.I. field offices in Washington, D.C., and Miami.<\/p>\n John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: Those firings sent shock waves.<\/p>\n Senior executive 1: It was hundreds of years of experience in one brutal swoop. It made it easier to bring their people in, yes, but there are no people to bring in with that level of experience, because it\u2019s so specialized. You have to cut your teeth. It\u2019s just like the military. To lead, you have to understand headquarters and the field.<\/p>\n David Sundberg, former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office: I came back to D.C. to run the office at the end of 2022 when two special counsels, Rob Hur and Jack Smith, were appointed to investigate Biden and Trump. I did not direct those cases, but it was my job to manage the agent and analyst resources for them.<\/p>\n We conducted factual and effective investigations into two presidents from two political parties at the same time. To do that, you need leadership that believes in the nonpartisan independence of the agency. When I was told to retire or be fired, I was frustrated that I couldn\u2019t protect my analysts and agents from partisan interference. I wanted to be their shield. <\/p>\n Jacqueline Maguire, former executive assistant director: At the hearing, Patel made it sound like he didn\u2019t know they were getting rid of all the top leaders. But if he really had nothing to do with it, he would have shown up and asked, Where\u2019d everyone go? But he didn\u2019t ask.<\/p>\n They said we were being fired because we could not be trusted to carry out the president\u2019s agenda. I asked if there was any allegation of misconduct. They said no.<\/p>\n This was my life, my career, my identity, my calling. It was a privilege to serve the American people. To end it so quickly, it still upsets me.<\/p>\n January 31<\/p>\n While Patel waited to be confirmed, Bove ordered<\/a> the acting F.B.I. leadership to create a list of all employees assigned to Jan. 6 investigations \u201cto determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.\u201d In response, Driscoll and Kissane sent a survey to employees asking about their roles in those cases.<\/p>\n To begin his second term, Donald Trump granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6 riot. The case was the largest investigation in the history of the F.B.I. Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times<\/p>\n Maria Ricci, former assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office: The news hit about the list and the survey, and it was mass chaos. People who worked on real sensitive cases \u2014 Jan. 6, the special-counsel investigations, the public-corruption side of the Trump investigation \u2014 were packing up their bags and assuming they were about to be fired. People were crying, taking down family pictures from their desks because they were afraid that they wouldn\u2019t be let back in on Monday. This was at the same time that some of the people who worked on those cases were working on the plane crash in the Potomac. They were diving out there finding dead bodies and being told that they were going to be fired.<\/p>\n Northwest special agent: If you really dig deep down, it\u2019s not just the case agents. Those cases involved a whole host of other people, like surveillance, negotiators, SWAT teams. It\u2019s hard not to have touched one of those cases in some way. Maybe even more so than 9\/11, because Jan. 6 was the largest investigation in the history of the bureau.<\/p>\n Michael Feinberg, former assistant special agent in charge of the field office in Norfolk, Va.: Emil Bove did not care that individual agents have no say in what matters they work on. You get assigned investigations. There were many agents who ended up on that list who had misgivings about how aggressively Jan. 6 was investigated. So there was a real sense that there was a sort of random persecution going on rather than actually figuring out who was making operational decisions and assigning responsibility to senior executives.<\/p>\n Bove was viewed by the F.B.I. work force not only as somebody whose integrity could not be trusted but as this almost cartoonish figure halfway between a mob enforcer and the grim reaper. <\/p>\n (Bove did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n February 4-5<\/p>\n In response to Bove\u2019s demand, Driscoll and Kissane handed over a list of thousands of employees, identified by only their bureau ID numbers, who worked on the Jan. 6 investigations. In response, current and former F.B.I. employees sued the Justice Department, arguing that compiling the list was a violation of privacy that would endanger agents and their families. As a result of the suit, the Justice Department agreed not to release the names of the people on the list.<\/p>\n Senior executive 3: Bove wanted some scalps; he asked for a short list of the main folks. Driscoll and Kissane decided to give them all case participants \u2014 everybody got lumped in. They were trying to protect people by flooding the zone.<\/p>\n Human-intelligence agent: A source called me after Jan. 6 saying they saw people they knew posting photos on social media of themselves at the Capitol. I put this in the pipeline at the time through my squad support secretary. Now she\u2019s on the list for pressing send to get this information to the right place.<\/p>\n Field-office leader 1: The entire F.B.I. received a bizarre email from Emil Bove.<\/a> The email described \u201cinsubordination\u201d by Acting Director Driscoll and Acting Deputy Director Kissane regarding their refusal to provide names of the Jan. 6 agents. This is part of why Driscoll is a folk hero.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Defend the homeland\u2019 was now on your screen when you logged in. To me, that sounded like a far-right political slogan.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Bovin, former intelligence analyst<\/p>\n February 20<\/p>\n The Senate voted 51 to 49 to confirm Patel. Almost immediately, he changed the F.B.I.\u2019s priorities. Under Wray, the bureau had eight stated goals: combating terrorism, organized crime, espionage, public corruption, white-collar crime, cybercrime and violent crime, as well as protecting civil rights. Now Patel stressed four: defend the homeland, rebuild public trust, crush violent crime and ensure fierce organizational accountability.<\/p>\n Patel, with his girlfriend, the country singer Alexis Wilkins, being sworn in as F.B.I. director last February. He was confirmed by the Senate, 51 to 49. Leah Millis\/Reuters<\/p>\n Michael Bovin, former intelligence analyst: \u201cDefend the homeland\u201d was now on your screen when you logged in. To me, that sounded like a far-right political slogan that betrays the F.B.I.\u2019s nonpartisan mission.<\/p>\n We also had posters on the wall of the F.B.I.\u2019s core values. Someone pulled the diversity poster down. A photo made the rounds of them painting over<\/a> \u201cdiversity\u201d and the other values at Quantico, the F.B.I. academy.<\/p>\n That was very frustrating, because we spent time on this in training at Quantico. Diversity meant the F.B.I. cared about having people from all walks of life. In Hoover\u2019s time, it was all accountants and lawyers. Now it\u2019s not like that. One of my classmates was a manager at a major appliance company. Others came from D.C. consulting groups. And then there were the military and the police officers.<\/p>\n Philip Fields, former counterterrorism analyst: The first thing they did was they disbanded our Foreign Influence Task Force. They said that we had to pull back on investigations under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, which applies to people who might be working at the direction of a foreign government without disclosing it. People that I worked with in the counterintelligence program were very upset about a lot of the investigative tools being taken away.<\/p>\n Kayla Staph, former cyber special agent: Shifting priorities away from cyber means less time tracing illicit cryptocurrency transactions, unmasking the identities of cybercriminals and determining their locations around the world, and disrupting nation-state adversaries who target critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n When former F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray went before Congress in January 2024, he said that even if we shifted every single F.B.I. agent and analyst to working China cyber, we would be working with one person to 50 Chinese hackers or cyberthreat actors. That\u2019s an insane statistic \u2014 and that\u2019s just China.<\/p>\n Tonya Ugoretz, former assistant director of the directorate of intelligence: I was responsible for the morning intelligence briefing. Every director gets to choose how they want to receive information \u2014 how often and in what form. I did everything I could, leading up to Director Patel coming on board, to provide options for how those meetings would run. What type of information do you want? Do you like graphics? Do you like to read? All of that. I wanted to set him up, from Day 1, to make effective decisions.<\/p>\n Field-office leader 1: Patel had his first director\u2019s call with the heads of all the field offices. He had no agenda, no organized thoughts, no strategy or leadership philosophy or priorities to share. I specifically remember him saying at one point, \u201cI don\u2019t read.\u201d He explained he didn\u2019t read briefing materials.<\/p>\n Senior executive 2: There was a feeling among many in the F.B.I. that the bureau needed to change. Some believed HQ had gotten too big; metrics and bureaucracy were inhibiting investigations, and resources needed to be better aligned to the threats.<\/p>\n But what Kash said was basically that every process at the F.B.I. was de facto wrong and would no longer be followed. It came across as contempt for the way former directors had done business and a statement that the former structures would not apply to him.<\/p>\n February 23<\/p>\n With Patel installed, Trump named his pick for deputy director. Rather than choosing a career agent, which had been the practice for most of the F.B.I.\u2019s history, the president selected Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster and former Secret Service agent who had described F.B.I. agents as \u201cthugs for the Democrat Party<\/a>\u201d and called for disbanding the bureau. <\/p>\n Dan Bongino in December, shortly before resigning as F.B.I. deputy director and announcing a return to podcasting. Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Kayla Staph, former cyber special agent: The deputy director oversees daily operations, so it has always been someone who knows the bureau, who has worked their way up, knows the culture, knows policy. Patel had explicitly stated to the F.B.I. Agents Association that he would appoint an in-house F.B.I. special agent, as had been the case for over 100 years.<\/p>\n Michael Feinberg, former assistant special agent in charge of the field office in Norfolk, Va.: When we found out that Dan Bongino was going to be the deputy director, concern reached a fever pitch. We were going to have two people who it would not be an exaggeration to say were conspiracy theorists with very little experience in federal law enforcement.<\/p>\n Senior executive 3: Patel stopped having his weekly meetings with the leaders of the field offices on Wednesdays. There were phone calls from one individual to another, and things were getting missed, things were getting dropped, because they didn\u2019t want to have an email chain.<\/p>\n Tonya Ugoretz, former assistant director of the directorate of intelligence: Routine internal communications stopped. The director and the deputy got frustrated with media leaks, and they wouldn\u2019t send anything out about people retiring and new people filling their roles or reorganization of the work force. People had to go to social media to see what was going on and who might be next on the chopping block.<\/p>\n (In response to questions about this article, Bongino wrote in an email: \u201cA \u2018media\u2019 enterprise that viciously propagated the most destructive political hoax in American history? You guys are jokers, relying on people we likely removed for misfeasance or malfeasance, to feed your ignorant audience the nonsense gruel they crave.\u201d)<\/p>\n Late February <\/p>\n Patel directed the F.B.I., which has no immigration-enforcement authority, to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement in conducting raids and making arrests. Field offices began assigning F.B.I. agents and analysts to work immigration shifts, pulling them away from other priorities like counterterrorism, public corruption and white-collar crime. <\/p>\n John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: We\u2019d been told that when Trump watched footage or saw a picture of a raid, he got mad that he didn\u2019t see F.B.I. raid jackets.<\/p>\n ICE was saying they wanted their teams to commingle with our teams. Tactically, you don\u2019t commingle units that haven\u2019t trained together. My bosses said, If we work on immigration, we use our teams and our case info. They put together a list of people already in F.B.I. files we had concerns about, so we\u2019re not just targeting people over their citizenship status.<\/p>\n They also had to juggle Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who wanted to ride in our tactical vehicle to do her TV stuff. That makes all the operators uneasy, and it makes them less safe.<\/p>\n (The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n Human-intelligence agent: I had 20 years\u2019 experience. I was involved in undercover sensitive operations. The bureau hired me for national security, to prevent threats from Al Qaeda and other groups throughout the Near East \u2014 not to sit in a parking lot arresting immigrants.<\/p>\n Midwest case agent: I was a grunt agent. I enjoyed trying to take apart large criminal organizations piece by piece.<\/p>\n They relabeled task forces from drugs to immigration and pushed us toward focusing on deportation versus convictions for actual drug offenses.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, what used to be our focus, long-term investigations, are now short-term hits. You hit the guy carrying the bag, not the guy who made the call, because that\u2019s how you drive up the arrest and prosecution numbers. But the guy carrying the bag, you can\u2019t flip anymore, because he\u2019s getting deported.<\/p>\n Because F.B.I. agents are posting up with Homeland Security, citizens think we\u2019re part of ICE, which disrupts other investigations. It used to be that you could sit in front of a house, watching another house, and a lot of the time, people were OK with that. They might help you. Now they\u2019re scared.<\/p>\n Jill Fields, former supervisory intelligence analyst for violent crime in the Los Angeles field office: They decided they were going to do a big immigration push for one week at the end of February. L.A. is a major transshipment hub for drugs, and you\u2019re going to take people off of cartel cases? They wanted three times the normal number of people in the command post on each shift. I was like, This is too much. I was told that we\u2019ve got to do it for optics. It was to make a show for the president.<\/p>\n I was ordered to have members of my team run a preassessment on some anti-ICE protesters who allegedly had impeded an immigration arrest. F.B.I. policy says that an investigation can\u2019t be opened based on First Amendment-protected activity. The investigative team who analyzed the video determined that the protesters had done nothing wrong; the officers told them to stay back, and they did.<\/p>\n I was told they had to open an investigation anyway. I pushed back, and they said, Jill, you can either get fired today, or you can get fired in four years \u2014 meaning when another administration comes in and starts looking into constitutional violations. And I was like: Then fire me today. I\u2019m not doing something that is fundamentally wrong.<\/p>\n I had my squad taken away from me. I was told I was a problem. I was told that the seventh floor was aware of me \u2014 the seventh floor means the F.B.I. director\u2019s office. My squad depended on me, and now they have absolutely no top cover anymore. When they took my squad, I was done.<\/p>\n \u201cI was told that we\u2019ve got to do it for optics. It was to make a show for the president.\u201d <\/p>\n Jill Fields, former supervisory intelligence analyst<\/p>\n February 27<\/p>\n Pam Bondi, the attorney general, sent a letter<\/a> to Patel accusing the F.B.I.\u2019s New York field office of holding back thousands of pages of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Hundreds of bureau employees were diverted from their regular duties to review and process more than 100,000 pages, flagging references to Trump and other well-known people as well as redacting information about victims.<\/p>\n Michael Bovin, former intelligence analyst: We got this email about a big redaction project \u2014 all hands on deck. I thought it was the J.F.K. assassination. Nope. It\u2019s Epstein. Our job is to go through and make sure the computer got the right stuff redacted. We\u2019re working around the clock.<\/p>\n John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: A member of the redaction team asked me, \u201cCan I not work on this anymore?\u201d They\u2019d had a team call, and Patel jumped on the call and yelled at everyone, telling them to work faster \u2014 that he\u2019d fire everyone who worked on the redactions if he didn\u2019t have it when he wanted it.<\/p>\n May 12<\/p>\n The F.B.I. ordered field offices<\/a> to devote a third of their time to immigration enforcement. Ramping up deportations was the highest priority for Stephen Miller, one of Patel\u2019s key allies.<\/p>\n Federal agents in Chicago last June. More than 20 percent of the F.B.I.\u2019s work force has been assigned to immigration enforcement. Dylan Martinez\/Reuters<\/p>\n Field-office leader 1: Kash and Dan seemed to have no control over the immigration demands being placed on the F.B.I. Emails sent to F.B.I. field leaders with immigration staffing requirements were forwarded directly from D.O.J.<\/p>\n ICE did not have the requisite data or any semblance of a strategic plan to make the F.B.I.\u2019s efforts effective. Each F.B.I. field office was simply told to provide the designated number of F.B.I. agents to the immigration effort.<\/p>\n I remember praying that we didn\u2019t have a terrorist attack, mass shooting or cyberattack slip through the cracks because my agents, who were highly trained to protect against such threats, were assigned to immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n Tonya Ugoretz, former assistant director of the directorate of intelligence: When you\u2019re taking an agent or analyst who is an expert on the Russian F.S.B. and you have them focused on name checks for immigration enforcement, what investigations are sitting because they\u2019ve been diverted?<\/p>\n Kayla Staph, former cyber special agent: The immigration push grew immensely, and it grew fast. Leadership was like, This isn\u2019t going away, and all of you will now participate. HQ informed our field offices that the agents out with ICE needed to be taking pictures so they could post them to social media. I had never been asked to do that during an arrest operation before. It\u2019s inappropriate and tactically unsound. <\/p>\n Field-office leader 2: I am a conservative. I believe in tightening our borders. I just had an issue with the execution of it. My counterparts at D.H.S. were constantly getting yelled at, being threatened and fearing for their jobs. That\u2019s not the way to work. They literally had quotas. Each region had to have a certain amount of arrests every single day. It was completely asinine. <\/p>\n This is how things go sideways. For me, the No. 1 priority was agent safety. I don\u2019t want my agent to be killed or to be responsible for somebody else getting killed. I did everything I could to make sure that headquarters is happy, but at the same time, I\u2019m not jeopardizing my agents or my morals or the Constitution either. <\/p>\n Northwest special agent: In Minneapolis, agents were surveilling a bunch of Somali-run autism centers because it was a kickback scheme. The centers were recruiting kids from the community, falsely diagnosing them and giving the parents a cut of the federal dollars they received for treatment. This became front-page news when the criminal indictments came down, but back in February, agents had to stop investigating for weeks to work immigration. I did not go to law school, go to Quantico and work counterterrorism operations overseas to be doing traffic control for arrest-a-brown-person day.<\/p>\n Central U.S. case agent: I was working an undercover operation on a neo-Nazi group with a long history of criminal activity. The F.B.I.\u2019s niche in the federal law enforcement community is these specialized investigations, and now we\u2019re being pulled away from those. If I\u2019d wanted to be a cop, I would have just done that. When I resigned from the F.B.I., I was told they\u2019d have to close the investigation \u2014 there was no one else around to pick it up.<\/p>\n May 20<\/p>\n Patel traveled to Britain to attend a secret conference of the Five Eyes, the intelligence alliance formed after World War II among the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. <\/p>\n Senior executive 2: Every May, there\u2019s a Five Eyes conference with the head of every intelligence agency. This year it was in the U.K. Kash Patel is going. In the lead-up to that, his detail starts making crazy requests. He\u2019s got special requirements on everything. And the Brits are getting pissed.<\/p>\n Before the conference, his staff says he\u2019s unhappy because he doesn\u2019t like meetings in office settings. What he wants is social events. He wants Premier soccer games. He wants to go jet skiing. He\u2019d like a helicopter tour. Everyone who heard about this was like: Hold on. Is he really going to ask the MI5 director to go jet skiing instead of meeting? The schedule is set, and every Five Eyes partner is doing this. They can\u2019t just say that he\u2019s not participating and instead he wants to go to a Premier soccer game. This is a job, guys.<\/p>\n His staff only cared about three things: what his meals were, when his workouts would be and what his entertainment would be. The biggest plan is how he\u2019s going to get his girlfriend in there so she can go to Windsor Castle. He\u2019s got Nicole Rucker as his assistant, like a true executive concierge. And when she\u2019s not getting the food or the workout she wants, she\u2019ll just start screaming at people, Make it happen! <\/p>\n His staff was briefed multiple times that the Brits were going to want to talk about an F.B.I. position in London that has been pulled. The F.B.I. is arguably their most important partner. MI5 is 5,000 people. The F.B.I. is 38,000. If MI5 ceased to exist, it would be very bad for us. If we cease to exist, it would be an existential threat for them. That person was working on a ton of sensitive stuff, including embassy penetrations and technology, and they want this position back. So Ken McCallum, the MI5 director, goes to Kash Patel at the conference and says: Hey, we really need this position. It\u2019s so important for our mutual benefit. And Kash says: Yep, that person\u2019s going nowhere. She\u2019s absolutely staying. And the Brits rejoice.<\/p>\n Two weeks later, he reverses himself and removes her. The Brits are outraged. Kash will make promises and he will break them, and he doesn\u2019t worry about that.<\/p>\n On that trip, the heads of intelligence for the Five Eyes went to Windsor Castle and met with the king. There was a photo taken of all the Five Eyes people, some of whom are nondisclosed, meaning their affiliation with the British intelligence service isn\u2019t public. The Brits forwarded that picture as a keepsake for the individuals. They prefaced it with, This isn\u2019t to be shared. But Kash has decided he wants to post it on social media. They have people trying to negotiate with the Brits about whether that\u2019s possible. They\u2019re fighting with the director\u2019s office, like: You cannot post this. Do not do that. And they\u2019re arguing, He wants a picture out.<\/p>\n (The F.B.I. did not respond to questions about this trip.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe feeling I have more is unremitting anger at the executives who have taken an oath to the Constitution and are making moral compromises on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Feinberg, former assistant special agent in charge of the field office in Norfolk, Va.<\/p>\n June 1<\/p>\n Michael Feinberg, a leader of the F.B.I.\u2019s field office in Norfolk, Va., was forced out after Bongino discovered he was friends with Peter Strzok, an agent fired in 2018 for disparaging Trump while investigating his campaign\u2019s ties to Russia. In a text exchange, Strzok called Trump an \u201cidiot,\u201d and he responded to another text about Trump\u2019s presidential run by saying, \u201cWe\u2019ll stop it.\u201d (In response to a request for comment, Strzok noted that the Justice Department\u2019s inspector general found that political bias did not influence decision-making in the Russia investigation.)<\/p>\n Michael Feinberg, former assistant special agent in charge of the field office in Norfolk, Va.: I was at the field office working out in the gym on a Saturday, and I got a phone call from Dominique Evans, my newly appointed special agent in charge. She was on a cruise in Europe, and I was leading the office in her absence. She told me that Dan Bongino had somehow found out that I was friends with Pete Strzok. I explained to her that Pete and I had worked together in the counterintelligence division before there was any scandal associated with his name. We discovered we were into the same bands and became friends. I wasn\u2019t breaking any policy by going to see Nick Cave and Warren Ellis with him.<\/p>\n Dominique says she\u2019s going to get back to Bongino. When she calls me back, she says that Bongino is not satisfied with my explanation and that he\u2019s going to talk with Patel about it. She calls me back again later, and I ask her just to be square with me. I explain I love my job, I care deeply about the organization and, personally, I have a wife in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy. What exactly is going to happen to me?<\/p>\n And she says: You\u2019re probably going to be demoted. You should expect to get polygraphed or investigated about your relationship with Pete. And I am immediately removing you as acting special agent in charge in my absence. <\/p>\n Within 30 seconds of hanging up with her, I knew that I was going to quit. I took an oath to the Constitution, as idealistic as that sounds, and the point of an oath is that you follow it regardless of personal consequences. I was being targeted for blatantly political reasons. I don\u2019t want to sound like a boy scout, but we have to be an apolitical organization that does things by the book. We have the power to deprive people of their freedom. And in some circumstances, we have the power to deprive people of their lives. <\/p>\n (An F.B.I. spokesman said employees have been forced out only for behaving unethically or failing to deliver on the agency\u2019s mission. He declined to comment on specific firings, including Feinberg\u2019s.)<\/p>\n June 10<\/p>\n To be hired by the bureau and receive a security clearance, most F.B.I. personnel must pass a polygraph test, during which they are asked about foreign contacts, drug use and serious criminal conduct. The bureau also administers polygraphs to agents working on highly classified investigations and to agents accused of misconduct. The New York Times revealed<\/a> that Patel was ramping up the F.B.I.\u2019s use of polygraphs to crack down on media leaks and ensure loyalty to him personally. One question frequently asked was whether employees had said anything negative about the director.<\/p>\n Senior leader for counterintelligence: I worked counterintelligence and espionage cases my entire career. The polygraph is voodoo science. The bureau doesn\u2019t predicate cases on a polygraph \u2014 it\u2019s just an indicator. People fail a poly for lots of reasons. It puts somebody in the position of being very nervous. It\u2019s purposely stressful.<\/p>\n Tonya Ugoretz, former assistant director of the directorate of intelligence: They were polygraphing their own senior leadership team because they were so mad about media leaks. Each assistant director, as head of division, had to identify two people in our division to polygraph. Many of us volunteered ourselves and then asked one of our deputies so we wouldn\u2019t have to put it on our people.<\/p>\n Dawn E. Morrow, former senior human-resources manager: One of my employees got polygraphed for being in a meeting where apparently something was leaked. The way they were being used when I left was as a weapon, almost a punishment.<\/p>\n June 22<\/p>\n A gunman opened fire outside CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Mich. He shot and wounded one person before being killed by the church\u2019s security staff.<\/p>\n The scene of the shooting at CrossePointe Community Church in Wayne, Mich., last June. Paul Sancya\/Associated Press<\/p>\n John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: \u200b\u200bBongino called the field office in Detroit. In the normal course of business, if the deputy director calls at a moment like that, they\u2019re asking: How can we help? What do you need? They can turn on all the resources of the organization. But Bongino called and asked, What can I tweet about this?<\/p>\n The field office has to be careful \u2014 this is their boss. But the body was still there. They said, We\u2019ll get back to you. But Bongino kept calling back, asking, What can I tweet? <\/p>\n (Bongino declined to respond to questions about this specific event and others.)<\/p>\n June 24<\/p>\n Tonya Ugoretz, the head of intelligence at the F.B.I., was removed from her position. <\/p>\n Her dismissal came after Senator Chuck Grassley \u2014 an Iowa Republican and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which conducts oversight of the intelligence agencies \u2014 requested information from the F.B.I. about a years-old intelligence report. The report contained a secondhand tip that the Chinese government was creating fake IDs to cast votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n The F.B.I. provided Grassley with emails<\/a> from agents debating the report, which was ultimately withdrawn amid doubts about its credibility. In one email, an F.B.I. employee wrongly identified Ugoretz as the official who ordered the withdrawal.<\/p>\n In another email, an analyst expressed concern that the report might have been suppressed for political reasons. Marshall Yates, the head of the F.B.I.\u2019s office of congressional affairs, who provided the emails, wrote to Grassley endorsing the idea that the report was suppressed.<\/p>\n Tonya Ugoretz, former assistant director of the directorate of intelligence: For whatever reason, my name was mentioned as one of two officials who told the Albany field office, which issued that report, to recall it. It wasn\u2019t true. I was in the cyber division then, so it wouldn\u2019t have been my role. When I found out, I spoke to my supervisor. We met with Bongino that day. I was told it was out of his hands. I wasn\u2019t sure what that meant.<\/p>\n The next afternoon, I was placed on administrative leave. I was told that was because the F.B.I. didn\u2019t want to have to explain to Grassley\u2019s office why the person named in the emails was the current head of intelligence.<\/p>\n I heard that other F.B.I. leaders were stunned and asking for some kind of due process. Our inspection division contacted me and said they were going to conduct a strategic review \u2014 an internal investigation of the Albany field report and whether senior leadership, above me at the highest levels, directed this intelligence to be buried. I was interviewed twice for that and polygraphed.<\/p>\n In October, I got a call to discuss my options. I had to ask \u2014 What did the review show? The official I met with said he hadn\u2019t read it, but his understanding was the review found no misconduct by me or related to the recall of the report.<\/p>\n I asked, If the review found I did nothing wrong, why can\u2019t I return to my position? I was given the standard line: It\u2019s at the director\u2019s discretion to reassign senior executives, which is true. The only options I was given were demotions. I decided to leave.<\/p>\n I\u2019m just one person in a series of senior officials who were disappeared. I can\u2019t think of a better word for it. Heads of field offices would be there one day and gone the next.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a firm believer in the oversight function of Congress. Conducting intelligence missions in a democracy, as the F.B.I. does, requires oversight and accountability. \u200b\u200bIt\u2019s hard to say that providing materials to Congress is bad. But in my case, sharing the documents without having done any work to explain whether an allegation was true or false \u2014 how does that help Congress in its oversight mission?<\/p>\n What it does do is create fear among the work force. They lose the trust in their own agency to have their back.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were polygraphing their own senior leadership team because they were so mad about media leaks.\u201d<\/p>\n Tonya Ugoretz, former assistant director of the directorate of intelligence<\/p>\n August 6-8<\/p>\n Patel fired Brian Driscoll, the former acting director who had been leading the crisis-response group after Patel\u2019s confirmation, and Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office. Evans had been brought to Patel\u2019s attention by Kyle Seraphin, a podcaster and former F.B.I. agent who was suspended by the bureau in 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s fucked.\u201d (Driscoll and Evans have alleged wrongful termination in a pending lawsuit<\/a> against the F.B.I.)<\/p>\n Public-corruption agent: Seraphin and other agents who have been suspended are out there on social media with the credibility of being former F.B.I. agents. If you can say, I\u2019m the victim because of this guy Spencer Evans, and then he gets fired, it increases your credibility. People see that and think, Maybe they\u2019re correct, and the whole system is corrupt \u2014 even if most of it is nonsense.<\/p>\n John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: The downside of having folks scared about losing their jobs is that you go from being an organization where people come in and do the work to spending time keeping their head down or on LinkedIn looking for jobs.<\/p>\n I want to sound the alarm about how this affects Americans\u2019 safety. I\u2019ve seen it up close, where we have stopped stuff Americans will never know about. The F.B.I. doesn\u2019t do a good job, in my opinion, of highlighting the number of things it stops. There\u2019s a concern about scaring people; you don\u2019t want to make people feel under dire threat all the time. But thousands of attacks stopped over a few years is normal. That depends, though, on people doing the work.<\/p>\n \u201cI assumed Congress would see how uniquely unqualified Kash Patel was for the job.\u201d <\/p>\n John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division<\/p>\n August 8<\/p>\n Patel fired Walter Giardina, an agent from the elite public-corruption squad in Washington known as CR-15 that ran Arctic Frost, the investigation into Trump for interference in the 2020 election. <\/p>\n Two months earlier, Grassley had sent Patel and Bondi a letter containing misconduct allegations against Giardina made by unnamed whistle-blowers. They included a claim that Giardina had corroborated the Steele dossier, a set of later-discredited memos about Trump\u2019s ties to Russia in 2016.<\/p>\n Grassley named Giardina in the letter despite the bureau\u2019s standard practice of protecting case agents by asking Congress to redact their names from sensitive disclosures. (Clare Slattery, a spokeswoman for Grassley, said in a statement that it is his \u201clongstanding office policy to leave names unredacted in public document productions\u201d because \u201cAmericans deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent.\u201d)<\/p>\n Giardina tried to meet with Yates, the head of the office of congressional affairs, to contest the allegations and explain that he never had access to the Steele dossier.<\/p>\n Walter Giardina, former CR-15 agent: \u200b\u200bI took a lot of pride in being trusted with difficult assignments. Until this year, public corruption was the No. 1 criminal priority of the F.B.I. The people you\u2019re going after may be powerful, and they can come after you in asymmetric ways.<\/p>\n When Senator Grassley wrote a letter naming me to the director as the person behind the Steele dossier, that was punching all the way down. I don\u2019t know of any other time that a senator wrote a letter attacking an individual street-level agent. I\u2019m begging my managers and the office of congressional affairs to meet with me to sort out this situation \u2014 for me personally, but also for the F.B.I. as a whole. It would take one second to look at the case access history and see that I never even had access to the Steele matter. I had nothing to do with that.<\/p>\n My wife was in and out of the hospital from June 5 to July 15, when she passed away. During that time, I kept trying to meet with the office of congressional affairs about responding to Grassley\u2019s letter. On June 19, we had a meeting set at the Hoover Building. My wife had just started a new chemo medication. She had a terrible adverse reaction, and I said I was having family health concerns and asked to do the meeting via Teams, which would be pretty normal. They immediately canceled it. When I asked why, the answer was that Marshall Yates wanted to do the meeting not as an interview but as a mock hearing.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know my wife was about to pass away. I reserved a conference room at the hospital to meet the office of congressional affairs next to her room, so they could interview me. They didn\u2019t show up. She died the next day.<\/p>\n At my insistence, I was finally interviewed two days after her funeral. I said: I don\u2019t want anyone to tell me it\u2019s too soon. I won\u2019t be emotional. I want to get this over with. I knew the interview was messed up because Marshall Yates wasn\u2019t present. I had a prepared statement with all the facts. I gave it to them. They didn\u2019t ask any questions. I sent all the records they asked for. Then it was over. They\u2019d already decided to fire me, so no one was taking the interview seriously except me.<\/p>\n In CR-15, we worked the cases we were assigned. It was not my idea to open Arctic Frost. We were detailed to Jack Smith. The supervisors came to us and said, You\u2019re going to do this. We\u2019re losing the ability for agents to conduct their work without fear or favor because the F.B.I. won\u2019t protect you.<\/p>\n Maria Ricci, former assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office: Walter was one of the most heartbreaking ones, because it was the week after he buried his wife. She had cancer, and then he gets hit with this. I was at a happy hour at the Irish Channel, sitting outside with some other agents. And it was like: Oh, my god. How do we support him? How do we get food to him? Because he\u2019s on his own with three kids.<\/p>\n Blaire Toleman, former supervisory special agent for CR-15: My team always did the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. But the F.B.I. fired some of them for no reason, with no internal investigation we knew of. To fire my colleagues like that was shocking. I thought, Shouldn\u2019t it just be me, not the people I assigned to work on a case? I had huge grief about them.<\/p>\n We all worked in an agency where the truth was paramount. I said, People in the F.B.I. will follow the facts. We were waiting and waiting for that to happen.<\/p>\n David Sundberg, former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office: CR-15 is a storied squad. Walter and Blaire, like others, were chosen for the squad because they were exceptionally talented and experienced investigators. They could not tell you the breakdown of the political affiliations of the subjects they investigated. They were two of the best agents I\u2019ve ever worked with, and I\u2019ve worked with a lot of great ones.<\/p>\n The F.B.I. is accountable for what it accomplishes or fails to accomplish as an agency. We don\u2019t attach responsibility to individual case agents, who don\u2019t even get to choose what cases they\u2019re working.<\/p>\n September 10<\/p>\n Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at a university in Utah. Hours later, Patel told his 1.8 million followers on X that a suspect had been detained, only to backtrack<\/a> shortly afterward. Patel then flew to Utah to personally oversee the investigation. <\/p>\n Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, shortly before he was shot. Tess Crowley\/The Deseret News, via Associated Press<\/p>\n John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: I\u2019ve run so many command posts for major attacks. You don\u2019t know in the initial aftermath what\u2019s going on, but you should be able to say to bosses, \u201cWe think there are five suspects,\u201d or \u201cWe think it\u2019s this one person,\u201d and know that the information won\u2019t leave that conference room. Because it could be wrong. Often, in the beginning, it is wrong.<\/p>\n Human-intelligence agent: Now social media dominates and controls the perception of what we should be doing. It\u2019s incredibly hard \u2014 whether you\u2019re an operational support technician or a special agent or op assistant director \u2014 not to let it get to you. It\u2019s all we\u2019re hearing.<\/p>\n Senior leader for counterintelligence: When he landed in Salt Lake City, Patel didn\u2019t have a raid jacket and reportedly ordered people to go find him one. He needed a size medium. They found him a female\u2019s jacket that didn\u2019t have the patches that he wanted, so he had the SWAT team taking their patches off to put on his jacket before he would go to the press conference. I haven\u2019t worn my raid jacket since Quantico, in 20 years of my career. You just don\u2019t wear it, especially in a leadership position.<\/p>\n Senior executive 2: Whenever there\u2019s a critical incident, one of the first things that happens is a conference call with everybody \u2014 all the executives, most of the field offices dial in. The director rarely speaks, because someone with situational awareness is leading the call. They\u2019ll say: Here\u2019s what happened. Here\u2019s what we know. Here\u2019s what we need. But we get on, and it\u2019s just Kash berating the special agent in charge in Salt Lake. He\u2019s super emotional.<\/p>\n And then it turns surreal. He and Bongino start talking about their Twitter strategy. And Kash is like: I\u2019m gonna tweet this. Salt Lake, you tweet that. Dan, you come in with this. Then I\u2019ll come back with this. They\u2019re literally scripting out their social media, not talking about how we\u2019re going to respond or resources or the situation. He\u2019s screaming that he wants to put stuff out, but it\u2019s not even vetted yet. It\u2019s not even accurate.<\/p>\n When I was an agent, I did hundreds of these cases. The initial information that comes in is always wrong. There\u2019s too much coming in, and it takes time to vet. And it was obvious that Kash can\u2019t understand that and doesn\u2019t want to understand that. <\/p>\n Everyone on the call is just like: This guy is completely out of control. On another call, he said: When a crisis happens, the only thing you need to do is call me. The most important thing in any crisis is controlling the narrative. I was like: No, no, no. We actually have to do some work here. We\u2019re going to have to investigate, to solve this.<\/p>\n September 16<\/p>\n In a congressional hearing, Patel was questioned about his and Bongino\u2019s decision to change the bureau\u2019s fitness test for new agents, replacing situps with pull-ups. Senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, pointed out that the increased emphasis on upper-body strength could make the test disproportionately harder for women because of differences in physiology. Patel replied that the new test was appropriate for agents in the field who \u201chave to chase down bad guys and do really hard work.\u201d The F.B.I. went forward with adding pull-ups to the test, scoring men and women differently.<\/p>\n Senior executive 3: Bongino wanted to establish a new physical-fitness test without any evidence-based research. He wanted to have men and women do the exact same pull-ups, which all of the data said would lead to losing a number of female recruits and potentially female agents that hadn\u2019t been tested for pull-ups before.<\/p>\n When he was informed of that, Bongino said, You can have the best female agent take down the biggest case in our history, but if on the Ring door-camera video she\u2019s out of shape or overweight, that\u2019s going to be the story. He was worried about whether or not they\u2019d look good on a doorbell camera. He said it\u2019s the way these times are.<\/p>\n Kayla Staph, former cyber special agent: I score really high on the physical-fitness test. I coached sports. I can do pull-ups when I train for them. But there was still a feeling of diminished value. The test should actually be reflective of our daily duties.<\/p>\n \u201cOur motto is \u2018Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.\u2019 I hope and pray one day they will have upper leadership that embodies that.\u201d<\/p>\n Kayla Staph, former cyber special agent<\/p>\n September 26-29<\/p>\n The F.B.I. fired<\/a> a group of agents who were photographed kneeling<\/a> during a Black Lives Matter protest in the summer of 2020. A dozen of those agents later sued<\/a> the F.B.I. for wrongful termination, claiming that the crowd had backed them against a wall and was throwing objects. They knelt, they said, \u201cto defuse a volatile situation, not as an expressive political act.\u201d<\/p>\n Maria Ricci, former assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office: Three of the people in that picture had worked for me. We\u2019re not cops, despite what Kash Patel says. We\u2019re investigators. We gather evidence and build cases. That summer, we were put on the street to handle riots. And we were never, ever trained to do that. Cops have batons. They have pepper spray. They have all sorts of other tools for crowd control. What we have are our voices and our guns. These agents were surrounded and made a decision to de-escalate the situation. And that was, in my opinion, the right choice.<\/p>\n Senior leader for counterintelligence: The firings were a reaction to people online calling them Kneel Team Six. That incident was investigated by F.B.I. leadership, and the agents were cleared. Then Kash Patel comes in and reopens the whole thing. They were cleared again, but Patel fired them anyway. <\/p>\n October 1<\/p>\n Patel dismissed David Maltinsky, an F.B.I. agent in training, who had displayed a Pride flag at his desk when he worked for the bureau as a tactical specialist in Los Angeles. Maltinsky was three weeks from his graduation at Quantico.<\/p>\n David Maltinsky, former tactical specialist and agent trainee: My aunt and uncle are in law enforcement \u2014 my aunt is a retired special agent \u2014 and I aspired to carry out that same mission. So when I applied and was accepted at Quantico, I was accomplishing my life\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n I was in the dorms with my squad when I heard that my supervisor needed to talk to me. She and I were led into a conference room. Then the executives walked in and sat down. One of them said, David, there\u2019s no other way to say this, but you are being terminated effective today. He handed me a letter that said I had \u201cexercised poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage\u201d in my work station in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n In 2021, the F.B.I. approved Pride flags to fly in front of federal buildings. At the end of Pride month that year, the flag that had flown outside the L.A. field office was given to me by bureau leaders to maintain. Other gay F.B.I. employees texted me to say how incredible it was to see it up there. It wasn\u2019t that long ago that being gay meant you couldn\u2019t get a security clearance \u2014 you couldn\u2019t have a job at the F.B.I. It was 1993 before you could serve openly.<\/p>\n Reading the letter, I was thinking this may be connected to a complaint that my supervisor got after the inauguration. An employee who worked on another floor claimed the flag was now in violation of President Trump\u2019s executive order banning D.E.I. The flag had been on my desk for years at that point. My supervisor reassured me that it didn\u2019t violate anything in his view. He said: Keep it up. You don\u2019t need to take it down. But somehow word of the Pride flag reached Kash Patel.<\/p>\n One of the executives asked me where I was going to go that night, and I told him I had nowhere to go. It was so quiet in that room. You could see in their faces that they thought this was awful. They said, You could stay another night if you need to plan and pack. I appreciated that, but if the directive was for me to leave, I\u2019m going to leave.<\/p>\n October 6-8<\/p>\n Grassley released documents showing that F.B.I. agents working on Arctic Frost subpoenaed the Jan. 6 call logs of nine Republican members of Congress<\/a>. The logs did not include the content of the conversations, but Grassley said<\/a> that the subpoenas amounted to spying and that Arctic Frost was \u201carguably worse than Watergate.\u201d <\/p>\n Patel then fired two more agents<\/a> who worked on Arctic Frost. He also shut down<\/a> the CR-15 public-corruption squad. \u201cYou\u2019re darn right I fired those agents,\u201d Patel said that night on Fox News. \u201cYou\u2019re darn right I blew up CR-15.\u201d<\/p>\n Public-corruption agent: \u201cVendetta\u201d is the best word for what they\u2019re doing. I\u2019ve tried to figure out where the vitriol comes from. I think it\u2019s partisanship.<\/p>\n From a basic investigative standpoint, if you\u2019re looking into a possible conspiracy and you want to know who that person might have reached out to on a particular date or time, then seeking subpoenas for call records is a reasonable and logical step. We\u2019re talking only about the in-and-out numbers and the date, time and length of the calls. Obtaining that information is such a basic tenet of an investigation. And sometimes you get it and you find out it means absolutely nothing. It helps you rule something out.<\/p>\n Jacqueline Maguire, former executive assistant director: There are rules surrounding grand-jury material to protect the integrity of an investigation as well as people\u2019s privacy and civil liberties. These proceedings are normally kept secret. Documents in a case file are part of a pending investigation, and more action is needed to corroborate the evidence. It\u2019s problematic to release this material without context.<\/p>\n October 25<\/p>\n Patel flew on an F.B.I. jet to a wrestling event in Pennsylvania, where his girlfriend, the country singer Alexis Wilkins, was performing the national anthem. The pair then took the plane to Nashville, where Wilkins lives. That weekend, Patel again used the jet for personal travel, this time for a trip to Boondoggle Ranch, a hunting resort in Texas that is owned by a major Republican donor. <\/p>\n Kyle Seraphin, the former agent and podcaster who previously supported Patel, posted some of the flight records on X and criticized him for flying at taxpayer expense during a government shutdown. Patel reportedly blamed Steven Palmer, an agent who oversaw the bureau\u2019s aviation assets, for the bad publicity and fired him. <\/p>\n Field-office leader 2: There\u2019s a $545 million budget cut for the bureau. Meanwhile, you\u2019re spending millions of dollars just gallivanting. How do you justify that?<\/p>\n Senior executive 2: Whenever the girlfriend is going to sing the national anthem at some wrestling event or some National Rifle Association or Turning Point event, they\u2019re calling the local SWAT team, saying, You\u2019re going to guard her. Meanwhile, in Nashville, those poor bastards \u2014 their SWAT team has actually been converted to her protection. They\u2019re not even doing their own SWAT arrests anymore. They\u2019ve got to bring in other teams to do that, because they\u2019re guarding her all the time.<\/p>\n David Sundberg, former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office: This is among the reasons William Sessions lost his job when he was F.B.I. director \u2014 for allegedly misusing government planes and having agents run errands for his wife. That was the 1990s. Since then, having a SWAT team protect an F.B.I. director\u2019s family member or girlfriend \u2014 to my knowledge, that didn\u2019t happen when the director wasn\u2019t present. And I spent more than half my career in tactical positions, including three years in which I had programmatic control of every F.B.I. SWAT team. <\/p>\n October 29-November 3<\/p>\n Patel fired four more agents who worked on Arctic Frost after Grassley released documents from whistle-blowers naming them. <\/p>\n Coordination between Grassley and the F.B.I.\u2019s<\/a> office of congressional affairs was unusually close throughout the year. Marshall Yates, the head of the O.C.A., and his team combed through the F.B.I.\u2019s files to identify agents they thought were biased, according to congressional aides. Former law-enforcement officials believe these agents are among those whose names Grassley is making public, bypassing the F.B.I.\u2019s protections for employees. (A Grassley spokeswoman said his disclosures followed the rules and were thoroughly vetted over months or years.)<\/p>\n Yates and Rosemaria Marketos, a former CR-15 agent working with him, were also members of the Weaponization Working Group<\/a>, a task force created by Bondi to address \u201cabuses of the criminal-justice process\u201d during the Biden administration. <\/p>\n Christopher O\u2019Leary, former senior executive in the counterterrorism division: The irony of the name \u201cweaponization group\u201d is rich. They are doing what they said the Biden administration did. If the weaponization group and the office of congressional affairs have merged at a certain level, that is very problematic for two reasons. First, this merger abandons the F.B.I.\u2019s history of being unbiased. Second, O.C.A. becomes another bullhorn for this administration\u2019s political narrative. The people paying the price are the public servants in the F.B.I. and D.O.J., and more broadly, the American people.<\/p>\n Senator Chuck Grassley at a news conference in October about Arctic Frost, the investigation into Trump for interference in the 2020 election. Annabelle Gordon\/Reuters<\/p>\n David Sundberg, former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office: It\u2019s concerning to me that senior officials are saying agents from the Department of Homeland Security need to wear masks to avoid being doxxed, while the names of F.B.I. agents are being read aloud in Congress, which can lead to the same risks. I\u2019ve not seen a public defense of these agents, which may be the unfortunate result of the removal of so much of the F.B.I.\u2019s senior leadership.<\/p>\n November 3-4<\/p>\n In a final blow to CR-15, Patel fired Blaire Toleman, who was in charge of the squad when it investigated Trump.<\/p>\n Blaire Toleman, former supervisory special agent for CR-15: In my years of service, I never so much as got a stern talking-to. I got a call saying I\u2019d receive a letter by the end of the day that I was no longer employed with the F.B.I. I was at a training. I asked if I had to drive to the office to turn my stuff in. Yes, I did. My squad helped me pack up my office. My wife picked me up. Quite a few people, around 40, walked me out.<\/p>\n On the way home, I got a call that I might not be getting fired. Then I got another call two hours later: You\u2019re definitely not fired. Then the next day, I got fired again. My letter of termination said I was being fired due to my lack of judgment, leading to the weaponization of the government. In reality, they were firing us because they didn\u2019t like the case we worked.<\/p>\n A lot of people in the bureau are pissed about what\u2019s happening, but they will step up to try to make sure the American people remain safe, because that\u2019s our job. When I was getting walked out, I told my squad and the other people with me: Keep your heads up. Don\u2019t let the American people suffer.<\/p>\n December 4<\/p>\n In a leaked memo, Bondi tasked the F.B.I. with compiling a list of \u201cdomestic terrorism organizations\u201d in response to a presidential memorandum in September that ordered federal law enforcement to prioritize domestic threats, particularly antifa. <\/p>\n \u201cCommon threads animating this violent conduct,\u201d the presidential memorandum stated, \u201cinclude anti-Americanism, anticapitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States government; extremism on migration, race and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality.\u201d <\/p>\n At a congressional hearing in September, Patel testified that the bureau had increased the number of domestic terror investigations opened that year by 300 percent.<\/p>\n Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi in December. Bondi tasked the F.B.I. with compiling a list of \u201cdomestic terrorism organizations.\u201d Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Philip Fields, former counterterrorism analyst: Antifa is not an organization. It is a loosely formulated ideology. Designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization blurs the lines between investigating national-security threats and First Amendment-protected activity. The broadness of the language suggests that the lines could get blurred between left-wing extremist groups and advocacy groups for left-aligned policies.<\/p>\n National-security intelligence analyst: The bureau is still dealing with the reputation it acquired under Hoover, when he oversaw a vast domestic surveillance network and the F.B.I. maintained dossiers on huge numbers of people not suspected of crimes. The malfeasance of the \u201960s and \u201970s is really drilled into us at Quantico. I think a lot of people reading Bondi\u2019s memo very reasonably interpreted it as meaning they want a return to Hoover. I know that across the institution, people are very uncomfortable with that language.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople that I worked with in the counterintelligence program were very upset about a lot of the investigative tools being taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n Philip Fields, former counterterrorism analyst<\/p>\n January 4<\/p>\n As the Trump administration approached its one-year mark, Patel promoted the bureau\u2019s success in fighting crime under his leadership. On X, he claimed<\/a> a \u201c100% increase\u201d in year-to-year arrests and a \u201c210% increase\u201d in the disruption of gangs and criminal enterprises. \u201cThis FBI is saving lives,\u201d he wrote, \u201cprotecting innocent kids, and taking deadly drugs off our streets at levels not seen in decades.\u201d <\/p>\n Senior executive 3: The F.B.I. is bilking their numbers. F.B.I. agents are walking around providing support for local police and ICE. If the local police or ICE makes an arrest, the F.B.I. is counting it in their stats. One example I heard: An F.B.I. agent was walking around with a couple cops who arrested someone for shoplifting, and the F.B.I. claimed it as an arrest. It used to be that the main thing that we would capture in our own arrest stats was if the F.B.I. was the lead agency and it was a federal charge. It hurts me to say it, but they\u2019re bullshit numbers.<\/p>\n Central U.S. case agent: Let\u2019s say the Highway Patrol pulls somebody over. There\u2019s a gun in the car. Well, then all of a sudden an F.B.I. car shows up, a D.E.A. car shows up, an A.T.F. car shows up. They run the gun and see if it\u2019s stolen. They run the person and see if he\u2019s a felon. Oh, he\u2019s a felon? OK, great. Now the F.B.I. and the A.T.F. and the D.E.A. are all going to say that they got an arrest because they showed up just to balloon the numbers. <\/p>\n Field Office Leader 1: When you make F.B.I. agents street cops, you get street-cop numbers. We didn\u2019t used to count immigration arrests, because we didn\u2019t do immigration. Now we do. We didn\u2019t do street patrols in D.C. in the past. Now we do. <\/p>\n In the past, we mostly worked the complex investigations the F.B.I. is famous for. Complicated work with wires and sophisticated techniques \u2014 all aimed at taking out the entire criminal enterprises or national security threats. Now, under Kash, we are counting stuff that has been historically left to local police departments and other agencies and saying, Wow, look at us.<\/p>\n (An F.B.I. spokesman disputed these accounts. \u201cThe FBI ONLY counts state arrests when we work cases jointly from partners,\u201d he wrote. \u201cSince becoming director, Patel\u2019s focus has been on partner engagements and joint operations, we do it together.\u201d) <\/p>\n January 7-9<\/p>\n In the days after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis, the Trump administration blocked state and local officials from reviewing the evidence. Justice Department officials, including Patel, steered the F.B.I. away from a civil rights investigation into whether the ICE agent used excessive force. Instead, Patel ordered an investigation into local activist groups and Good\u2019s wife. Six federal prosecutors resigned<\/a> in protest. The Justice Department also began criminally investigating<\/a> Democratic officials in the state, including Governor Tim Walz and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey.<\/p>\n F.B.I. agents at the scene where Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis in January. David Guttenfelder\/The New York Times<\/p>\n David Sundberg, former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office: The F.B.I. has closed and cleared civil rights investigations without officers being charged when there\u2019s no evidence to substantiate a charge. The way to ascertain the truth is to conduct a fair and impartial investigation. But when government officials communicate on social media about their perception of the events, and many agents have been fired over the outcome of cases they worked, that could have negative impact on this investigation.<\/p>\n Jill Fields, former supervisory intelligence analyst for violent crime in the Los Angeles field office: I\u2019ve seen multiple videos of protesters being arrested who aren\u2019t impeding immigration enforcement. Yes, they\u2019re yelling, they\u2019re taunting, but that\u2019s their right. This is what I was worried about and why I pushed back when the L.A. office was asked to investigate protesters last year. It was unthinkable to me then, and now it\u2019s happening. If you start arresting or investigating people for exercising their First Amendment rights, then they don\u2019t have those rights. <\/p>\n The F.B.I. will literally open an investigation into a bureau car accident, so the idea that they haven\u2019t opened a civil rights investigation after an agent-involved shooting \u2014 that\u2019s shocking.<\/p>\n January 9<\/p>\n