from Reuters
In a memo on Sunday evening, the FBI Agents Association told its 14,000 members that new director Kash Patel
had assured them that he would follow tradition and name a career
special agent with operational expertise as his deputy director.
"Director Patel agreed," said the memo, which Reuters reviewed.
An
hour after the memo was sent, Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who
has never been an FBI agent and who has called the agency “irredeemably
corrupt,” was named to serve as Patel’s deputy director. That position
oversees day-to-day operations and carries enormous power to supervise
investigations across the nation.
The unprecedented appointment of two loyalists to President Donald Trump
has rattled the FBI community and lawyers who worry that their lack of
experience and overt statements supporting retribution for the
president’s critics could presage a misuse of the nation’s most
prominent investigative agency, according to 14 former FBI employees and
prosecutors interviewed by Reuters.
“FBI
agents’ oaths to support and defend the Constitution will be tested as
never before,” said David Laufman, who worked with FBI agents on
sensitive investigations for decades, including as chief of
counterintelligence for the Justice Department...
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