The FBI was once known for taking down gangsters like Bonnie and Clyde. But in recent years, its targets have been more like the Boston Marathon bombers.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, then-Director Robert Mueller reorganized the bureau around national security and intelligence, with the top priority stopping another terrorist attack on American soil.
Now the Trump administration is changing that, as Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel is moving to reorder the agency’s priorities with little input from Congress or the public.
Patel, who often refers to FBI agents as “cops” — a label they tend to shy away from — is taking steps to get the bureau more involved in investigating violent crime, even as he is carrying out a plan to dramatically slash the workforce.
Current and former FBI officials tell MSNBC the changes are coming at the expense of the FBI’s role protecting the U.S. from terrorists, hackers and spies — as well as its traditional missions of fighting white-collar fraud, public corruption and child sex crimes. If more agents are working on violent crime cases as their total number is being reduced, these officials say, there won’t be the manpower left to devote the same level of resources to national security and other threats.
Multiple current and former FBI officials say they have already seen that happening over the past several months, as agents have been diverted to immigration enforcement and veterans with years of experience have left the bureau.”
“This is putting the nation in jeopardy — they seem to be making national security threats secondary,” said Rob D’Amico, a retired FBI agent and MSNBC national security and law enforcement contributor.
“They are effectively making the FBI a national police force,” said one senior agent, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. “Who will address the missions the FBI has focused on for decades? There is no other entity that does them.”
Last week, top FBI official Jodi Cohen informed the heads of more than 50 FBI field offices that Patel plans to equip FBI agents with Tasers; that all agents are expected to spend time investigating violent crime; and that the bureau will begin allowing other federal law enforcement agents to join the FBI after an abbreviated training, whether or not they have a college degree, one current and four former officials briefed on the call told MSNBC.
In addition, the FBI plans to cut around 15% of its workforce — 5,800 people from a total of around 37,000, the FBI field office leaders were told, according to the sources. (The bureau employs around 13,700 special agents, according to the Department of Justice.)
Dozens of FBI agents have been required to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., each night as part of the attempted federal takeover of that city’s police force.
Coming at a time when FBI agents have been ordered to devote time to immigration enforcement, and when dozens have been required to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., each night as part of the attempted federal takeover of that city’s police force, news of the changes is sparking alarm among current and former senior bureau officials, the sources said.
They say the national security threats facing the U.S. are more acute than ever, from Chinese espionage to lone-wolf terrorism to ransomware attacks that could take down critical infrastructure. They worry that fraud and corruption will bloom as the FBI cuts back on investigating it. The Justice Department also slashed its public integrity section and stopped pursuing certain kinds of corruption cases.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, current and former FBI officials say that Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, don’t understand the FBI’s mission and are making decisions based on Trump’s political agenda.
“You have the top two decision-makers, both with limited exposure to the law enforcement and legal system, solely making long-impacting decisions based on social and political rhetoric, conspiracy theories rooted in ‘deep state’ cleansing, and lack of understanding of the true implications of the decisions which they will soon walk away from and leave for others to clean up,” one former senior agent said.
The FBI declined to comment. Patel has said the FBI remains committed to its national security mission, but he has made no secret of his desire to steer the bureau more intensively into combating violent crime. After spending years denouncing the FBI as a corrupt tool of a “deep state” plot to frame Trump, Patel now says it’s important “to let good cops be cops.” He has overseen changes to the FBI website elevating “crush violent crime” above other traditional priorities though on the same level as “defend the homeland.”
Violent street crime historically has been the purview of state and local police, while the FBI has focused first on national security threats such as espionage and terrorism, as well as civil rights, white collar crime, public corruption and organized crime. The bureau also specializes in battling child sexual exploitation and other specific crimes that demand its expertise, such as kidnapping, serial killers and bank robberies. An FBI webpage devoted to some of the bureau’s most famous cases is a compendium of notable moments in American history — very few of them violent street crimes. From the 1955 murder of Emmett Till to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill to mortgage fraud in the 2007 housing crisis, the FBI is often called upon to deal with complex cases of national import. For years after 9/11, Justice Department documents listed the FBI’s top priorities in this order: terrorism, espionage, cyberattacks, public corruption, civil rights, transnational criminal organizations, white collar crime — and then violent crime. While Trump has portrayed crime as out of control in many parts of the country, the FBI’s own data shows that violent crime rates nationally aresignificantly lower than they were two decades ago. A spike in violent crime during the Covid pandemic has abated, the data shows. While some FBI agents are former police officers, many more joined the bureau after earning degrees in law and accounting. A bachelor’s degree has been required to become an FBI agent. In Washington, D.C., some FBI agents are frustrated over being ordered to go out at night on anticrime foot patrols, something they are not trained for, current and former officials said. FBI agents, for example, are armed with pistols but not equipped with less-lethal options, such as Tasers. The plan to change that that sources have described is sparking concern, because it suggests leadership believes more FBI agents should be policing the streets like beat cops. “Morale is low and people are stressed,” one FBI official in Washington said in a text, adding that a senior colleague reported that “people are coming into her office in tears talking about how they are really uncomfortable with these orders and their supervisors are at a loss to help them.” Subscribe to the Project 47 newsletter to receive weekly updates on and expert insight into the key issues and figures defining Trump’s second term.
Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for MS NOW. Recommended
