FBI Director Kash Patel is reportedly settling scores over years-old Trump investigations.
According to MS NOW, the close ally of Donald Trump turned top law enforcement official has ordered a sweeping purge of senior FBI agents and field office leaders connected to past criminal investigations involving the president.
The 45-year-old ousted the acting assistant director overseeing the New York field office, as well as special agents in charge in Atlanta and New Orleans, the outlet reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Patel also removed up to six agents in Miami linked to the FBI’s 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, along with other agents who worked on a probe examining efforts by the Trump administration to prevent a transition of power after he lost the 2020 election.
The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI and the White House for comment.
The shake-up comes days after Trump publicly lashed out at FBI officials following a report from right-wing news outlet Just The News that retired special agent Timothy Thibault played a key role in opening the 2022 investigation into the 2020 election.
In a rant on Truth Social, Trump branded FBI agents “scum” and demanded their removal.
“Kash better get them out, NOW! Radical Left Lunatics put in by the ‘Auto Pen’ and Obama!” the president wrote.
Patel later responded that the bureau had already removed “corrupt actors” linked to probes of the 2020 election results, and “terminated their employment last year.”
“America voted for the end of weaponized law enforcement, and that’s what we are delivering,” the FBI director wrote on Truth Social.
Since returning to the White House for a second term in January, Trump has been on a personal revenge tour against political rivals and officials who previously investigated him. The Trump administration has rejected accusations that the president is weaponizing the Justice Department.
In September, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked at a press briefing if the president was breaking his Inauguration Day pledge—that “never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”
“It is not weaponizing the Department of Justice to demand accountability for those who weaponized the Department of Justice, and nobody knows what that looks like more than President Trump,” she fired back.
“We are not going to tolerate gaslighting from anyone in the media or from anyone on the other side who is trying to say that it’s the president who is weaponizing the DOJ.
“It was Joe Biden and his attorney general who weaponized the DOJ. Joe Biden abused this sacred American institution to go after his political opponent in an election year,” she said.
