Blaze News original: FBI whistleblower warns Patel: DEI rot at FBI deeper than you can imagine
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The week before President Donald Trump took office for the second time on January 20, many of his supporters cheered as news broke that the FBI had shuttered its Office of Diversity and Inclusion the previous month. However, some of that celebration may have been premature, since the ODI staff apparently remain with the agency, merely having moved to other departments.
To learn more about the ways the FBI has attempted to prepare for Trump's second term, Blaze News spoke with former Special Agent Steve Friend, who blew the whistle on the agency regarding its investigations into January 6. Friend offered a bleak illustration of the agency as it currently stands, as well as hope for the tenure of prospective new director Kash Patel.
ODI closes up shop: Notable but limited victory
On January 16, Fox News broke the news that the FBI Office of Diversity and Inclusion was now closed. "In recent weeks, the FBI took steps to close the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), effective by December 2024," the agency said in a statement, as Blaze News previously reported.
During campaign season, Trump repeatedly pledged to end DEI-related infrastructure that had lately sprung up in federal agencies, so the news of the now-defunct ODI seemed to signal that Trump had already made an impact, even before he returned to the White House.
'The reason is, CORRUPTION!'
Trump, however, responded to the news not by gloating but by issuing a stern warning.
"We demand that the FBI preserve and retain all records, documents, and information on the now closing DEI Office — Never should have been opened and, if it was, should have closed long ago," he posted to Truth Social. "Why is it that they’re closing one day before the Inauguration of a new Administration? The reason is, CORRUPTION!"
Trump did not elaborate on the nature of the alleged corruption, but Friend indicated to Blaze News that the FBI was still playing games with Trump, publicly following Trump's agenda while privately preparing to impede it.
To demonstrate, Friend then read aloud to Blaze News an internal memo confirming that rather than losing their jobs, the DEI proponents formerly of the ODI had transferred to the equal employment office, a subdivision of human resources: "In recent weeks, the FBI took steps to close the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, effective December 2024. Special emphasis programs have been realigned under the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity Affairs."
The OEEOA may be a separate entity from the ODI, but the newcomers at the OEEOA may find their colleagues amenable to their previous DEI advocacy. A memo regarding job openings at the FBI, issued on an unknown date, claimed that the OEEOA's mission, in order "to ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans, the Department of Justice is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment."
Then, in an EEO-related policy statement, which is also undated, the FBI noted the "diverse" nature of the American citizenry. "Consistent with the FBI’s Core Values, and just as the FBI is committed to serving every United States citizen regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or any other protected basis," the statement continued.
"The American people pay for this. And they don't know how bad it is," Friend said.
'Already scrubbed from their website': Evidence goes viral
Though an agency that Americans once respected, the FBI has lately fallen out of favor, especially after the public learned that former Director James Comey and others spied on Trump's first presidential campaign under the baseless pretense that Trump surrogates had somehow colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
The image of the FBI sank even farther during the Biden-Harris administration, when the agency ruthlessly targeted pro-lifers peacefully protesting outside abortion clinics as well as patriotic Americans who, as Blaze News investigative journalist Steve Baker described it, simply walked "through an open door at the Capitol on Jan. 6."
Republicans in particular became openly angry with the agency after the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and the lawfare campaigns launched against him. An NBC News poll taken just after Trump was indicted in 2023 showed that 56% of Republicans viewed the FBI negatively at that point and just 17% positively.
'ATF began implementing OPM’s initial guidance on DEIA ... in response to the president’s executive orders.'
With public opinion of the FBI now at perhaps its lowest point this century, some on social media responded to the news of the shuttered Office of Diversity and Inclusion by carefully perusing FBI webpages to discover the professional fates of erstwhile ODI officials.
Article III Project attorney Mike Davis and suspended Agent Garret O'Boyle — an apparent target of the FBI for blowing the whistle on alleged misconduct related to Jan. 6 — claimed on X that Dr. Jenise Carroll, the former chief diversity officer at the FBI, is now in charge of HR.
"The 'Chief Diversity Officer' was Dr. Jenise Carroll," O'Boyle wrote in reply to Davis. "She is now a Section Chief for the @fbi's Human Resources Branch. She is already scrubbed from their website, unless you use @waybackmachine."
— (@)
Carroll has spent at least a decade bouncing around various DEI-related divisions in the federal government. In 2015, she worked as an adviser to the director of diversity management and equal opportunity for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense.
A colonel in the United States Air Force, Carroll then became the deputy director of the Secretary of the Air Force Department of Diversity and Inclusion. She was named chief diversity officer of the FBI last May.
Blaze News could not independently verify that Carroll is now a section chief in human resources at the FBI, though J. Michael Waller of the Center for Security Policy gave a similar report. Waller added that Carroll's webpages "are being scrubbed off the web."
In response to a request for comment, the FBI gave Blaze News the following statement: "We are complying with the executive order and Office of Personnel Management implementing guidance. The Office of Diversity and Inclusion has been dissolved, along with component DEIA programs."
Of note, conservative outlet Townhall also did some digging into the DEI leaders of another federal agency — the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — and apparently discovered that Lisa Boykin, the chief diversity officer of the ATF Office of Director, still remains in the same office but under a new title: senior executive.
ATF public affairs specialist Johnny Michael told Blaze News: "ATF began implementing OPM’s initial guidance on DEIA immediately after its issuance on January 21, 2025, in response to the president’s executive orders. We have proactively taken the necessary steps to ensure compliance with this guidance, including by placing impacted personnel on administrative leave."
'Stall and wait him out': FBI and plans for Patel directorship
Garret O'Boyle claimed in his tweet that "the subversion started November 6th," the day after Trump won the 2024 election, and Trump's victory in November certainly seems to have led directly to the shake-up at the FBI regarding DEI.
His nomination of Kash Patel to serve as the next FBI director also seems to have set off alarm bells with the top brass. When asked why the FBI would simply shuffle DEI-focused agents around, Friend told Blaze News that members of the FBI upper echelons don't want the agents "to get fired when Kash Patel comes in."
"They're promoting a lot of people into senior executive service roles, which are very hard to get rid of. They're creating jobs for them so that they can just exist," Friend explained.
"This is all a total spinning to be in compliance with what they perceive to be the new administration and a new director."
'They're going to just try to bubble-wrap him like they did to Chris Wray, keep him away from things.'
Should Patel be confirmed by the Senate, he will take over for acting Director Brian Driscoll, himself a placeholder following the resignation of controversial former Director Christopher Wray. Trump tapped Wray to lead the FBI in 2017 after the firing of James Comey, an act that triggered a special counsel investigation — spearheaded by Robert Mueller, yet another former FBI director — into so-called Russian collusion.
Trump repeatedly denied the allegations and described the Mueller investigation as a "witch hunt." Trump was vindicated in 2019 after Mueller admitted in his final report that he and his team — initially made up of anti-Trump activists like Andrew Weissmann, Peter Strzok, and Strzok's former mistress, Lisa Page — found no evidence of Russian collusion.
Despite the perceived bias and questionable premise of the Mueller investigation, Wray frequently sided with the Mueller team and against Trump, his boss. In 2018, Wray told Lester Holt of NBC News that he did not believe the investigation was a "witch hunt."
"I've been consistent. I get asked this a lot," Wray began. "I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it's a professional investigation conducted by a man that I've known to be a straight shooter in all my interactions with him in my past life in government and certainly since then."
While Wray's statements during and after Trump's first term made him wildly unpopular in MAGA circles, Steve Friend hinted to Blaze News that Wray may have been under the thumb of others within the FBI, including Deputy Director Paul Abbate, and that those same people may soon try to contain Patel's effectiveness as well.
"Once [Patel] makes it through ... down the road — like three, nine months later — then they're going to just try to bubble-wrap him like they did to Chris Wray, keep him away from things, give him all these little side projects," Friend said.
"'You've got to travel around the country, [go to] 55 field offices, and meet everybody,'" Friend imagined officials telling Patel. Friend believes these officials will try to keep Patel distracted "and not let him do anything," so that by the time midterm elections come in 2026, everyone will have a different focus.
"So they're hoping to sort of stall and wait him out."
Patel is scheduled to sit for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Though he is one of many bold nominations by Trump, Patel will probably be confirmed since Republicans now enjoy a 53-seat majority and Vice President JD Vance can always act as tiebreaker, should three Republicans join Democrats in voting against him.
The agency is certainly presuming that Patel will soon be in charge, Friend claimed. "There's already a plan in place to thwart him, to slow-roll him," he said.
More specifically, some agents intend to "slow-roll" the background check on Patel as well as the approval process for his security clearance.
The problem with their plan is that Patel already has a security clearance, Friend claimed. When pressed about how such a key piece of information could have gone unnoticed by FBI leaders, Friend gave a frank reply: "Because they're not competent."
Though Friend has a rather low opinion of the leadership and the agency in general, Friend remains optimistic that the FBI can be salvaged under Patel.
"I've been on record a couple years [that] I didn't think that there was a solution for the FBI. I thought we should just do away with it, shatter it to a thousand pieces, scatter it to the wind," Friend acknowledged.
"But having looked at Kash Patel's resume, actually having interacted with him," Friend said he is now optimistic about the future of the agency.
Friend also hopes that going forward, more agents will be more transparent about any dysfunction or misconduct they witness at the FBI. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance a couple years ago when a few of us came forward," Friend said, referring to January 6 investigations.
"It's a twice-in-a-lifetime chance to get on board with a new director here."
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Originally Published at Daily Wire, Daily Signal, or The Blaze
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