By Steve Neavling
Senior FBI officials are being pushed out of their positions as the Trump administration accelerates efforts to shake up the bureau’s leadership, The New York Times reports.
Several top employees have been told to resign within days or face termination, according to individuals familiar with the situation.
The abrupt shake-up has rattled FBI personnel, many of whom had expected changes but not at this pace.
“I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock,” one senior agent wrote in an email to colleagues after learning he would be dismissed “from the rolls of the FBI” as soon as Monday morning.
The move is particularly striking because it comes before Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, has been confirmed. Until the Senate votes on Patel’s appointment, Brian Driscoll remains the bureau’s acting director.
Traditionally, FBI directors have had broad discretion in selecting senior personnel, but those decisions are typically made gradually rather than through a sweeping purge.
Some of the officials being forced out had worked at FBI headquarters, while others held key positions in field offices. Among them are agents involved in politically sensitive cases, including one who helped investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and another who played a role in the FBI’s probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents.
A person familiar with the changes said the top agent at the Washington field office, the second-largest in the bureau, was also given an ultimatum on Thursday. Although he had planned to retire, he intended to stay on longer to assist with the transition—plans that were abruptly cut short.
The pressure on senior FBI officials mirrors a broader overhaul underway at the Justice Department, where numerous career prosecutors, including those in key decision-making roles, have been reassigned or fired. The Biden-era leadership is being systematically replaced, and concerns are growing about how far these shake-ups will go.
Patel, testifying at his confirmation hearing, sought to distance himself from the personnel decisions, insisting that he would not launch a campaign of retribution against perceived political enemies.
“Any accusations leveled against me that I would somehow put political bias before the Constitution are grotesquely unfair,” he told senators.
It remains unclear whether he was informed in advance about the forced resignations.
Still, Patel has made no secret of his desire to remake the FBI, once vowing to clear out its headquarters and turn the building into a museum. His past rhetoric has heightened fears within the agency that the ongoing shake-up is just the beginning.
