Top FBI Officials Asked To Resign Or Be Fired As Trump Promises Reform

The Trump administration has reportedly told top FBI officials that they should resign or expect to be fired by Monday.

The dismissal would come as President Donald Trump has promised dramatic reforms to the FBI and the Justice Department, which he says were weaponized against him and his supporters during the Biden administration. Kash Patel, his pick to head the bureau, promised lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would seek to “de-weaponize” the FBI. 

NBC reported that those asked to leave were “executive assistant directors” promoted by previous FBI Director Christopher Wray. One of the FBI officials received an email informing him he might be removed “from the rolls of the FBI” by Monday morning, the New York Times reported. 

“I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock,” the unnamed official said. 

The move comes as significant changes could come to the FBI if the Senate votes to confirm Patel. Patel, who served as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence during Trump’s first term, has been a frequent critic of FBI leadership. He played a major role in investigating the FBI’s discredited probe of alleged ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. 

“The only way to truly remove weaponization and politicization from law enforcement is to follow the Constitution,” Patel said during his Judiciary Committee hearing, saying the bureau should focus on violent crime and drug overdoses. 

Democrat senators repeatedly asked Patel if he had plans to go after Wray or other Biden allies, such as retired Army General Mark Milley. Patel replied that he wasn’t interested in going backward and would emphasize violent crime if confirmed. 

“America deserves a better brand of justice and I’m going give it to them,” Patel said, saying that he would not target political opponents if confirmed. Patel also told Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) that he was unaware of any plans to fire any agents involved in the bureau’s investigations into Trump. 

Aside from cuts at the FBI, the Trump administration has also worked to curtail the size of the federal workforce across the entire government. On Tuesday, the Office of Personnel Management sent an email to two million federal workers offering to pay them until September 30 if they resign by February 6. The message from OPM suggested that significant cuts were on the horizon and that it could not guarantee that everyone’s position would still be in place with incoming reforms.