WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has asked the FBI for a list of probationary employees and individual justifications for keeping anyone who has been at the bureau for less than two years, sparking a new round of fears within a bureau that has been rocked by the first three weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The news comes amid an ongoing dispute over an effort to gather names of FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases. A federal judge signed off Friday on an agreement that forbids the public release of the list of FBI employees who worked on the sprawling probe, which grew to be the largest in FBI history, with more than 1,500 defendants.
In the 21 days since Trump was inaugurated, his appointees have wrought change at the FBI at a dizzying pace: Trump mass pardoned convicted Jan. 6 rioters while naming an advocate for Capitol rioters as the top federal prosecutor for Washington. His administration fired federal prosecutors who had been hired to work Jan. 6 cases, and Justice Department employees formerly on special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which prosecuted Trump, were also shown the door. The head of the FBI Washington field office was forced out, as were top leadership officials at the bureau, and an Elon Musk associate and other outsiders were given top roles at headquarters.
Now, the Office of Personnel Management — which has been heavily involved in Musk’s work to overhaul the federal government — is seeking the names of the FBI’s short-tenured “probationary employees,” who have limited appeal rights, making them prime targets for the Trump administration’s efforts to quickly shrink the federal government. The request — which covers FBI headquarters and all 55 field offices around the country — mirrored recent OPM requests to other federal agencies.
The request sparked defiance at the FBI, with its Washington field office planning to justify all of its probationary employees. The Trump administration’s early moves have been a major distraction for agents, officials told NBC News, at a critical time and amid a variety of threats.
“We are living a nightmare and are so distracted right now from the real work,” a federal law enforcement official said. “It’s crazy. Our people are a mess. We are doing our best to take care of them, but it’s hard to stay steady when you don’t know what’s next.”
Another federal law enforcement official said, “If their goal was to paralyze law enforcement, they’ve achieved it.”
The FBI had been bracing for widespread change after Trump won the election, with former Director Christopher Wray — whom Trump appointed after he fired James Comey during his first term — announcing his plan to step aside. But the overhaul has gone deeper than some feared.
The Jan. 6 caseload had revealed some major divides within the FBI, with one top official getting a warning soon after the attack that some within the bureau were “sympathetic” to Capitol rioters. Federal prosecutors working the cases out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia have told NBC News that there were pockets in the FBI that never supported the Jan. 6 cases, and some FBI employees protested how the cases were handled.
Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI special agent who is close to Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI during his second term, said there were assault cases against Jan. 6 defendants that would have had the support of much of the American public. But as he sees it, “something very strange happened” with the Capitol riot defendants, highlighting that FBI employees’ names were redacted from affidavits since the early days of the investigation, a restriction enacted after some investigators faced threats.
“The FBI has a secrecy and a transparency problem. That doesn’t mean that the work that it is doing is always bad, but if you hide it, people will assume the worst right now,” Seraphin said. “They have a massive PR problem. Most people that lean conservative have a uniquely different perspective on federal law enforcement.”
Seraphin, who has been deeply critical of the FBI and disputes the justification for suspending his security clearance, said the approach the Trump administration took looked “very aggressive” from the Justice Department side. It sparked some animosity within the FBI and sympathy for officials at FBI headquarters, even from special agents in the field who may not have a positive outlook toward headquarters.
Seraphin said he still thinks Patel can be a transformative figure, and he said he does not believe Patel is pulling the strings at the FBI right now. His discussions with Patel have been constrained because Patel has not yet been confirmed, and Seraphin said he has no plans at the moment to take on any formal role if Patel is confirmed.
“We don’t talk politics, and we don’t really talk policy so much, either, because it’s just not appropriate at the moment, because there’s no official authority to do anything,” Seraphin said. “We can’t make any asks, and he can’t make any promises, which is all appropriate.”
