ARGUMENT: UPHOLDING THE LAW AT THE FBIWhat’s Going on at the FBI?

The Trump administration has launched a broad political purge of the FBI, aiming to remove senior officials and field agents who are regarded as insufficiently loyal to President Trump.

Benjamin Wittes writes in Lawfare:

The Situation on Friday was too fluid to write responsibly on the ongoing purge at the FBI. 

Things have clarified enough today to say one thing clearly: A lot of people at the bureau—leadership and street agents, analysts and staff alike—are flirting with heroism right now.

Here is my best understanding of what is going on from a combination of press reporting and my own poking around. 

Last week, as has been widely reported, the Justice Department leadership sought to force into retirement a variety of senior leaders at FBI headquarters. In addition, the FBI’s interim leadership was pressured to identify agents and other personnel who had worked on the Jan. 6 investigations. And special agents in charge around the country were told to help identify such personnel. Specifically, they were told to administer a questionnaire to staff—a questionnaire that was due at 3:00 pm today—in which agents and others are asked to self-report on their own Jan. 6-related activities. 

From what I gather, the pushback has been remarkable. A large number of agents are refusing to fill out the questionnaire. The FBI Agents Association has sent around model language for agents who refuse to cooperate. At the management level, the leadership of a number of field offices has made clear that they will not take administrative action against those who do not self-report. And the bureau’s acting leadership itself is clearly pushing back against the demands for this information. 

In his email to the workforce, Acting Director Brian J. Driscoll, Jr. made clear that the demand for information “encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts. I am one of those employees, as is acting Deputy Director Kissane.” 

How widespread is the internal resistance? I don’t know. But we are going to find out soon. 

Wittes concludes:

It’s early yet, and I don’t want to wax over-optimistic in dangerous times. 

But I will say this: I’m very proud of how the FBI is performing under incredible stress. 

An FBI that was putting its collective foot down and refusing to be politicized, refusing to participate in a political witch hunt within its own ranks, and refusing to become political agents of the regime in power would, so far anyway, look almost exactly like what we are seeing.

It is always a dangerous thing to cheer when an armed component of the federal government resists political leadership. Nobody, after all, elected the FBI. 

But when the political leadership seeks to conduct personnel actions against career officials based on who was involved in lawful and appropriate law enforcement actions against those who now have the protektzia of the faction in power, a certain measure of conscientious objection is in order—lest the entire operation become an organ of authoritarianism. And when the Justice Department tried to fire people because Trump does not trust them, which violates the Civil Service Reform Act—a law that forbids the government from taking adverse action against those in the competitive service for improper reasons, politics foremost among them—agents who resist are upholding the law, which is closely aligned with their own oaths and the FBI’s culture, and the rule of law itself.

Whether this is happening in the numbers it will take to force the administration to back down I don’t know. Whether it is happening in the numbers it will take to make some Republican senators reconsider their race to install a partisan apparatchik at the helm of the agency, I don’t know either. And whether the next week will see a wholesale elimination of decades of investment in law enforcement and intelligence under the rule of law, I cannot say. 

Today, I can only say thank you to everyone who is doing the right thing in ways the public will probably never see. Right now. Today. When it’s very hard. To everyone who is telling [Acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil] Bove, “Fire me if you don’t like it but no, I’m not helping”: may all the gods keep you safe.