The corruption of the FBI in the words of current and former agents

When he returned to office last year, President Trump called the F.B.I. a “corrupt” agency in need of overhaul, reported The New York Times. He had by then been the subject of three F.B.I. investigations: Agents examined his 2016 campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Though all three inquiries took place in part or entirely under Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director Trump appointed, he repeatedly accused the bureau of mounting a partisan attack against him.

To replace Wray, Trump chose Kash Patel, a former public defender and intelligence official who had never worked for the F.B.I. and had spun conspiracy theories about the bureau. Since Patel’s confirmation last February, the F.B.I. has undergone a transformation that has upended its nonpartisan rules and norms, deeply rattling many of its 38,000 employees.

Patel has fired agents who worked on the Trump investigations and radically changed the bureau’s mission. More than 20 percent of the F.B.I.’s work force has been assigned to immigration enforcement, pulling agents and analysts away from investigating public corruption, cybercrime, white-collar crime, drug trafficking and terrorism. Patel has also been embroiled in controversies over his use of government resources, his temperament and missteps in high-profile investigations.

We interviewed 45 employees who work at the F.B.I. or who left during Trump’s second term, as well as many other current and former government officials. Beginning with Trump’s selection of Patel, our sources narrated the events that most troubled them over the last year. Many details of what we learned are reported here for the first time.

The F.B.I. is a rule-bound and tight-lipped institution. Bureau policies prohibit active employees from speaking to the news media without authorization. Even for former employees, speaking out is a sign of serious alarm. Some of our sources shared their stories anonymously because they feared retribution from the administration. (To protect their identities, we are not indicating whether the people we quote anonymously are still employed by the F.B.I.) We corroborated their descriptions of specific events and conversations with colleagues, contemporaneous notes and internal records.

Patel and other F.B.I. leaders named in this article declined our requests for interviews, and we followed up with a detailed list of questions. In response to a request for comment, Ben Williamson, an F.B.I. spokesman, wrote: “This story is a regurgitation of fake narratives, conjecture and speculation from anonymous sources who are disconnected from reality. They can whine and peddle falsehoods all they want — but it won’t change the facts that the F.B.I. under this administration worked with partners at every level and delivered a historic 2025.”

We also asked the White House for comment. “President Trump and F.B.I. Director Kash Patel are restoring integrity to the F.B.I. by returning its focus to fighting crime and letting good cops be cops,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Many current and former employees fear, however, that the F.B.I. has become a weapon of the White House, and that the firings and the diversion of resources to immigration enforcement have left the country vulnerable to attack.

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