The FBI Takes Center Stage in Trump's Second Term
Democrats grilled Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi over Kash Patel, Trump's pick to lead the FBI. The exchange previewed the partisan battle over the bureau's future.
Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president yesterday. But before he even took the oath, Senate confirmation fights over his cabinet nominees signaled a major battle ahead: control of the FBI.
At the center of that fight is Kash Patel — the man Trump wants to lead the FBI. Democratic senators previewed that fight while questioning Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general and Patel’s would-be boss.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked Bondi if, as Florida’s attorney general, she would have hired someone with an “enemies list.”
“Senator, to cut to the chase, you’re clearly talking about Kash Patel,” Bondi responded. “I don’t believe he has an ‘enemies list.’”
In his book Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, Patel includes a list of members of the “deep state” — some of whom were cabinet members in the first Trump administration.
Bondi’s answer was lawyerly. Patel doesn’t explicitly call that list an “enemies list” — though that appears to be what it is — so Bondi deflected the question: “I don’t believe he has an ‘enemies list.’” She did the same with most Democratic inquiries about Patel, either dodging the premise or pleading ignorance.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota asked Bondi about Patel’s past statement that the FBI’s intelligence division is “the biggest problem the FBI has had” and that he would “break that component out of the FBI.”
“Do you agree?” Klobuchar asked.
“I have not seen those comments from Mr. Patel,” Bondi replied.
The exchange functioned as a political Rorschach test — typical for FBI debates in Washington.
Democrats saw Bondi ducking a question about Patel’s radical plans, suggesting he would gut a division crucial to national security. (“That’s the unit tracking Chinese spies!”)
Republicans saw Democrats defending an FBI they believe has been weaponized against conservatives. (“That’s the unit tracking Trump supporters!”)
Like Bondi, I hadn’t encountered that statement from Patel until Klobuchar cited it. But in a September 2024 episode of The Shawn Ryan Show, a conservative podcast, Patel said: “The biggest problem the FBI has had, has come out of its intel shops. I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.”
While Patel’s past statements raise legitimate concerns about his fitness to lead the FBI, his claim here that the bureau’s intelligence branch is “the biggest problem the FBI has had” is — arguably — true.
The Real Issue with the FBI’s Intelligence Arm
Before diving into specifics, it’s worth noting that Patel’s comment (and Klobuchar’s question) appear to conflate two major divisions within the FBI:
Intelligence ($2 billion budget)
Counterterrorism/Counterintelligence ($4.5 billion budget)
These two divisions, separate but interconnected, contribute to national security operations that account for more than 50% of the FBI’s annual $11 billion budget. Since 9/11, intelligence and national security functions have become the bureau’s dominant focus. For every dollar the FBI spends on traditional criminal investigations — its pre-9/11 mandate — it spends two on national security.
So what might Patel be referring to when he calls this division the FBI’s “biggest problem”?
Plenty.
This is the branch that:
Recruited thousands of informants in Muslim communities and ran aggressive sting operations, often ensnaring people with mental disabilities or financial struggles.
Used National Security Agency bulk data collection to identify domestic targets — without disclosing those methods to courts.
Conducted warrantless searches of NSA surveillance data, violating the rights of potentially millions of Americans.
Applied for FISA wiretaps through a non-adversarial process, bypassing constitutional protections.
Branded Black activists as “Black Identity Extremists” and surveilled Catholic communities in ways reminiscent of the Muslim surveillance programs.
The roots of these problems trace back to a post-9/11 decision. President George W. Bush considered splitting the FBI into separate criminal and intelligence agencies, similar to MI5 and MI6 in the UK. But then-FBI Director Robert Mueller pushed back, arguing that housing both under the FBI’s umbrella would benefit national security. Mueller won.
The result? The FBI has gradually morphed into an intelligence agency first and a law enforcement agency second. That shift has led to abuses, including the use of mass surveillance and loosely defined “assessments” that allow agents to investigate anyone, for any reason, with no oversight.
So Patel isn’t wrong to suggest that the FBI’s intelligence arm deserves more scrutiny. The problem is that true oversight has been a casualty of our hyper-partisanship.
The Partisan Divide on FBI Reform
Many Republicans, driven by grievances over Trump-Russia investigations, want to dismantle parts of the FBI. Many Democrats, seeing the bureau as a check against Trump, are reluctant to criticize it. (Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is a notable exception.) Lost in this fight is a real opportunity for oversight.
On an admittedly reductive level, this has led to a binary debate:
Republicans: “FBI bad.”
Democrats: “FBI good.”
Republican Representative Jim Jordan’s House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is a case study of this dynamic. Jordan and his allies used the so-called “Twitter Files” and whistleblower testimony from conservative FBI agents to argue that the bureau had been “weaponized” against the right.
Republicans identified real FBI abuses. But they ignored the fact that these and other abuses have long been used against Muslims, environmental and animal-rights activists, anarchists, and left-wing groups. Meanwhile, Democrats — defending the FBI against GOP attacks — failed to highlight these broader abuses, letting Republicans push the narrative that the bureau disproportionately targets conservatives.
As Jordan’s committee was holding hearings, I revealed that the FBI had inserted an informant into Denver’s racial justice movement in the summer of 2020. That informant, Mickey Windecker, encouraged Black Lives Matter activists to commit violence and tried to engineer a plot to assassinate Colorado’s attorney general — the exact kind of sting operation Republicans now denounce when it targets their side.
Democrats could have used examples like this to highlight the FBI’s history of overreach against all political movements and perhaps even argue that the bureau has a much longer history of disproportionately targeting Americans on the left. Jordan’s subcommittee could have become a modern Church Committee — an opportunity for long-overdue FBI oversight. But that didn’t happen.
The Coming Patel Confirmation Fight
The Bondi hearing previewed the fight to come over Patel’s nomination. Expect more of the same: Republicans will frame Patel as a reformer determined to end the FBI’s bias against conservatives, while Democrats will argue he seeks to dismantle a vital institution and repurpose it as a tool for political retribution.
It’ll boil down — once again — to:
Republicans: “FBI bad.”
Democrats: “FBI good.”
And the real questions — about how to curb FBI abuses, restore oversight, and define the bureau’s role in American life nearly a quarter-century after 9/11 — will likely go unasked.
The issue isn’t whether the FBI is “bad” or “good.” It’s whether Congress will ever impose real oversight. So far, both parties seem more interested in weaponizing the FBI debate than in fixing the bureau itself.
Digest: The FBI, Hackers, DEI, and Leonard Peltier
“I am departing the FBI”: Paul Abbate, the FBI’s deputy director who became acting director after Christopher Wray’s resignation, retired unexpectedly Monday — the same day Donald Trump was sworn in for his second, nonconsecutive term as president. Abbate had served as deputy director since January 2021, after David Bowdich quietly retired in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot. “I am departing the FBI,” Abbate wrote in an email to senior FBI officials.
“Not good”: In July, AT&T revealed that its systems had been hacked, exposing call and text data for nearly all current and former customers. The U.S. government believes a China-based hacking group known as Salt Typhoon was behind the breach, along with attacks on Verizon and Lumen Technologies. But the real kicker came last week, when Bloomberg reporters Jake Bleiberg and Margi Murphy broke the news that these hackers had accessed months’ worth of call and text logs from accounts used by FBI agents. That means China — or whoever else may have access to this data — could potentially identify the FBI’s confidential informants. If that sounds bad, that’s because it is. In a statement to Bloomberg, the FBI refused to confirm or deny whether Chinese state-backed hackers had obtained sensitive information that could compromise sources. “Any disclosure of such communications is both significantly detrimental to investigations but also potentially dangerous to confidential informants if their identity is disclosed,” William Evanina, a retired FBI agent and the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told Bloomberg. “Not good.”
“Self-delete”: The FBI removed Chinese malware from more than 4,000 computers in the United States — but not by kicking down doors and confiscating hard drives. Instead, the FBI announced that agents remotely triggered the malware’s self-delete function. The malware, known as PlugX, was developed by a China-based hacking group called Mustang Panda (or Twill Typhoon, depending on whom you ask). This isn’t the first time the FBI has used this type of intervention. As Ars Technica pointed out, the operation was similar to one a year ago when the FBI removed malware from hundreds of routers.
“The FBI should be focused on catching criminals, not winning participation trophies”: Just before Donald Trump was set to be sworn in for a second term, the FBI shut down its Office of Diversity and Inclusion — an inevitable casualty of the broader right-wing assault on DEI programs. The office had become a favorite target of conservative lawmakers, who framed it as a symbol of misplaced priorities inside the bureau. “The question is why were they allowed to be focused on DEI in the first place?” Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee wrote on X. “The FBI should be focused on catching criminals, not winning participation trophies.” President Trump celebrated the news in a Truth Social post and hinted that investigations could be coming. “We demand that the FBI preserve and retain all records, documents, and information on the now closing DEI Office,” he wrote.
“A cruel betrayal”: Natalie Bara, president of the FBI Agents Association, denounced President Biden’s decision to commute Leonard Peltier’s prison sentence, calling it “a cruel betrayal.” Peltier, now 80, was a member of the American Indian Movement and was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He has long maintained his innocence, acknowledging his involvement in the shootout but denying that he fired the fatal shots, describing himself as a political prisoner.