Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. In March, Trump addressed an audience at the Justice Department and accused the media and his critics of breaking the law. It is not hard to see his remarks as a directive to prosecute them.
Ryan J. Reilly at NBC:
One of three career federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi last week has written a passionate goodbye to his colleagues, praising them for their willingness to “enter the arena” and encouraging them to not be timid amid ongoing threats to their work.
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.
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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.
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.
The specifics of my experience may be unique—details often are—but the broad strokes of the story have become unfortunately common in recent months, as more and more special agents are driven out of the Bureau on mere suspicion of political unreliability. These developments should be concerning to all Americans. In the past six months, the FBI—and, for that matter, the Department of Justice and intelligence community as a whole—has been forcing out a wide range of experienced personnel needed to protect our nation. Under Patel and Bongino, subject matter expertise and operational competence are readily sacrificed for ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the workforce. At a time of simultaneous wars across the globe and a return to great power competition, this makes us all less safe.
