This piece from former FBI official Michael Feinberg says it all:
My resignation from the FBI
On May 31 of this year, in a series of phone calls beginning at nine in the morning and ending that afternoon, the newly installed Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Norfolk Field Office, Dominique Evans, made clear to me that, at the direction of Dan Bongino, my career with the organization had—for all intents and purposes—come to an end.
It would be an understatement to say that I had not expected this. In fact, I was in the midst of preparing for a potential move to Washington, D.C. to take on a new position at FBI headquarters.
But, it turned out, I had made a terrible mistake: I had remained friends with someone who had appeared on Kash Patel’s enemies list. How did Bongino find out about this private friendship? I honestly don’t know. What business was it of his? None at all. Was I accused of any sort of misconduct? No. It didn’t matter.
I faced a choice: get demoted or resign. I became the latest of a great many senior FBI special agents to walk out the door.
[…]
He goes on to say that he has always leaned right in his politics and was not particularly hostile to the Trump administration, despite some misgivings. But he had made that one mistake:
By the time spring came to southern Virginia, the majority of the Norfolk Field Office felt that we were in a relatively good space.
All that changed when I received a call from my boss. She wanted to know if I was friends with Pete Strzok.
That’s all it took:
Yet rules turned out not to matter much. And so, that weekend, Bongino informed my SAC, who in turn informed me, that he was halting—and actually reversing—my professional advancement.
I’m not going to rehash or relitigate Pete’s story here; it’s been told ably and comprehensively by others, not the least by himself. I’ll simply note that we worked together in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division roughly a decade ago, and we shared a number of mutual acquaintances before we ever even met (the counterintelligence world being not that large). Our own friendship began with a discovery that we liked the same bands and shared an interest in trying new restaurants; the notion that I was his “protégé,” as one X account stated, was news to us both. Most of our conversations since he left the Bureau have involved debating the relative merits of New Order versus Joy Division. If the fact that I sang along to “Every Day is Like Sunday” while he stood next to me at a Morrissey concert actually represents an imminent danger to the Bureau’s integrity, then, for the first time in nearly a half-century on this earth, I’m truly at a loss for words.
Yet under Bongino’s reign, it was apparently enough. My SAC informed me in a moment she described as “brutally honest,” that I would not be receiving any promotions; in fact, I needed to prepare myself for the likelihood of being demoted. She gave me no details about what position or office I would be sent to once my time as a leader prematurely concluded.
Furthermore, she told me, I would be asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, and (as I was quietly informed by another, friendlier senior employee) what could only be described as a latter-day struggle session. I would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty as part of the FBI’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence.
When my SAC revealed the concern about my friendship with Pete, and its imminent consequences, I knew that I could no longer stay at the Bureau. Within twenty four hours of my final phone call with her, I resigned, five years short of eligibility for retirement and a pension. I sent the following letter:
Dear SAC Evans,
I am writing to tender my resignation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, effective immediately.
In a series of phone calls yesterday, I was informed by you that, because I maintain a friendship with a former FBI executive who is a critic and perceived enemy of the current administration, I will not be receiving any of the promotions for which I am currently being considered, and that I should actually steel myself to be demoted from my present role; additionally, I was informed that I should expect to be polygraphed about the nature of my friendship. Even with these warnings and admonishments, though, it was never explained what policy, procedure, or institutional norm I had supposedly violated other than communicating with someone whom our current management finds politically undesirable. Within five minutes of our last phone call, an email went out to the office removing me as acting SAC in your absence.
It should go without saying—to anyone who cares about the Constitution and rule of law—that this is not right. Our organization’s motto is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,” but over the past six months there have been too many signs that our current leadership does not understand the last of those words. Earlier this year the ranks of our senior executives were decimated by forced retirements, and many others were willing to take their places without voicing concern or dissent. The Department of Justice has been ordered to open cases on individuals solely for having the temerity to say that the 2020 election was not stolen, or for having carried out their lawful duties as state level prosecutors; few people have pushed back. We sacrificed the names of every Special Agent who investigated the events of January 6, 2021, and an entire public corruption squad in our nation’s capital was disbanded for having worked on a related matter. Within our own field office, we shirked our national security obligations in order to move personnel to immigration task forces; our area of responsibility does not actually have a significant population of illegal immigrants, but our leaders wanted press release-ready roundups, so we pulled people from congressionally mandated counterterrorism and counterintelligence duties. I could go on.
I recount those events more in sorrow than in anger. I love my country and our Constitution with a fervor that mere language will not allow me to articulate, and it pains me that my profession will no longer entail being their servant. As you know, my wife and I are expecting our first child this summer, and this decision will entail no small degree of hardship for us. But as our organization began to decay, I made a vow that I would comport myself in a manner that would allow me to look my son in the eye as I raised him. It is now apparent that I can no longer both fulfill that vow and continue working for our current leadership.
It has been the honor of a lifetime to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.
Mike
Take the time to read the whole piece over at Lawfare. There’s a lot more detail and it’s all shocking. This is already making the McCarthy era look like child’s play. Where are we going to be in three and a half years?
update —
Andrew Floyd had been a leader in the Capitol Siege Section and stayed with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, now headed by interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. In an email sent Thursday, he expressed pride in seeking justice for “despicable and illegal acts against our brothers and sisters in uniform” who were victimized during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
“They entered the arena and were assaulted. Later, they were re-victimized. Called crisis actors, vilified, threatened, and told that what they experienced did not happen,” Floyd wrote in the email seen by NBC News.
Floyd’s email cited a quote from a 1910 Theodore Roosevelt’s speech commonly known as “The Man in the Arena,” which he said senior federal prosecutors would send to assistant U.S. attorneys who lost a case. Officially titled “Citizenship in a Republic,” Roosevelt said it is “not the critic who counts,” but those who are “actually in the arena,” noting that their place “shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Receiving that message, Floyd wrote, “made new prosecutors feel seen as they toiled, for long hours and often unsuccessfully, on difficult cases while trying to uphold the rule of law in this city.”
“I lost a few trials and each time I received that email I was reminded why I went into court in the first place. It was not winning that mattered, but the fight for justice,” he wrote.
“My days of entering the arena with you are over. I also have no regrets,” Floyd wrote.
“I know from my communications with you over the years that the people in this building do not keep quiet and are not timid. You pursue justice. You enter the arena. Win or lose,” he wrote. “From now on, although I can no longer join you, I’ll be on the sidelines cheering you on.”
Floyd’s farewell message was the latest sign of strife within the Justice Department, as career federal law enforcement officials wonder how deep Trump’s appointees will go in targeting those involved in prosecuting his allies. In a speech at the Justice Department in March, Trump decried what he called the prior “weaponization” of the Justice Department while calling for the jailing of his perceived opponents.
Floyd’s departure is part of what current and former officials describe as a growing “brain drain” at the FBI and Justice Department, as seasoned public servants leave under mounting political pressure and fear of retaliation.
The worst people are all that’s left.