FBI Director Kash Patel plans to gut an office after purging hundreds of agents who were deemed to be insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump.
The bureau has suffered a staffing crisis since Patel took the helm last year, with the former podcaster firing agents who were assigned to high-profile investigations involving Trump and presiding over an exodus of hundreds of experienced counterterrorism officials.
Patel has a habit of culling agents whenever he finds himself facing a new scandal, including questions about his use of agency resources—such as when he partied with the U.S. Men’s Hockey team at the Milan Olympics earlier this year—or the quality of his work with the bureau.
Now he also wants to shrink the Office of the General Counsel, a team of several hundred lawyers responsible for ensuring lawful investigations, responding to lawsuits against the FBI, and coordinating with the Department of Justice on cases, Bloomberg Law reported.
General Counsel Samuel Ramer has been told to cut his team by about 25 percent, sources told the outlet.
The move comes even as the bureau is being forced to defend itself against lawsuits brought by fired agents who allege their First and Fifth Amendment rights were violated.
Patel’s team had previously pushed Ramer to fire one of his attorneys at random to send a message, though nothing ever came of it, the sources said.
The office had so far managed to avoid any major purges after Ramer, who served in the first Trump administration, embraced the president’s second-term agenda and urged his team not to obstruct Patel, Bloomberg Law reported.
FBI attorneys had already stepped back from some of their traditional activity, including their practice of recommending against particular actions.
But Ramer’s relationship with Patel has been more precarious this year, several sources told Bloomberg Law.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for eliminating the Office of the General Counsel and assigning DOJ lawyers to handle legal reviews for the bureau.
An FBI spokesperson denied that Ramer’s relationship with Patel was “strained” and told Bloomberg Law that “all divisions with the FBI” were undergoing reorganizations.
“This is not unique to OGC — it is part of our wide-ranging effort to make the Bureau more efficient, effective, and responsive to the taxpayers we serve,” spokesperson Ben Williamson said.
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
In January, Trump had a social media meltdown after reading an article on a right-wing website about a retired special agent involved in the Arctic Frost investigation, which probed the president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
In response to Trump’s demands that the FBI fire the “total scum” involved in the operation, Patel assured him that the agents’ employment had already been terminated last year.
Two months later, two of the fired agents sued Patel and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleging they were denied due process and fired based on the perception that they were not Trump’s political supporters, in violation of their rights to free speech and association.
