A former FBI staffer has told The Atlantic that President Donald Trump’s picks to lead the nation’s top law enforcement agency have “no idea what they’re doing” and are “playing dress up.”
Michael Feinberg, an assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, left the FBI after getting a call from his boss in late May about a friendship with a former agent who criticized the president.
Feinberg, a 15-year veteran of the bureau, chose to depart from the agency rather than be fired. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino became aware that Feinberg was friends with former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, who has long provoked the president’s fury. Strzok was fired during Trump’s first term after the Department of Justice released texts in which he spoke negatively about Trump, who attacked him for his work on the probe into Russian election interference in 2016.
The connection to Strzok was sufficient for the bureau to cancel a promotion for Feinberg, he told The Atlantic. His boss indicated that he might be demoted and that he would have to take a polygraph test regarding the friendship. He chose to leave the FBI.
“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,” Feinberg wrote in his resignation letter, according to The Atlantic. He has chosen to speak out following his departure as former colleagues at the bureau have asked him to, themselves fearing retribution.
In an essay published by Lawfare early this month, Feinberg argued that the FBI is increasingly concerned with “ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the workforce,” which “makes us all less safe.”
He joined the FBI in 2009 because he wanted to “protect both United States interests in the world and the rule of law on the domestic front.”
Feinberg speaks Mandarin and helped lead the bureau’s probe into Huawei, the Chinese technology company, which the U.S. alleged was stealing trade secrets from U.S. firms. Following his departure, Feinberg is unsure if any senior counterintelligence officials speak Chinese at the bureau.
“It’s particularly concerning to me, as someone who dedicated his professional career to combating the Chinese Communist Party and all of its tentacles, to see resources and efforts diverted away from hostile foreign intelligence services and other serious threats to the homeland to focus on minor immigration status offenses,” he wrote in his essay.
Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel became embroiled in the ongoing scandal about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein earlier this month. They initially claimed that stark revelations would be made about Epstein and his connections to the wealthy and powerful. However, the Trump administration released a memo quashing the notion that Epstein had a client list and rejected any conspiracy theories surrounding his death by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell on August 10, 2019.
Asked about the Epstein scandal, Feinberg told The Atlantic: “They get a kick out of playing dress-up and acting tough. But they actually have no idea what they’re doing.”
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