FBI Restores Neutrality By Firing Agents Who Investigated Trump
The Trump administration encountered another outbreak of weaponized due process Tuesday as outside groups supported a lawsuit by three former FBI employees dismissed after working on the investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman and Blaire Toleman contend they were punished for accepting lawful assignments from supervisors, a radical employment theory under which federal investigators may investigate conduct without first consulting presidential polling averages.
The FBI Agents Association, which represents nearly 12,000 current and former agents still attached to procedural relics such as evidence, filed a brief supporting the employees. FBI Director Kash Patel has promoted a more efficient standard: Agents must enforce the law impartially unless the subject later returns to power, at which point their earlier impartiality becomes partisan misconduct retroactive to the date they first opened a case file. The reform eliminates confusion by requiring personnel to predict election results, cabinet appointments and future retaliation before performing any assigned duty.
Trump praised the bureau’s restored independence. “We have the most independent FBI in history because everybody there independently reaches the same conclusion I do, sometimes before I reach it, which is how you know there is absolutely no political pressure,” Trump said, articulating the constitutional principle that law enforcement is apolitical whenever it agrees with the president. Under the new framework, disagreement remains protected speech provided it is never spoken, written, investigated or reflected in an affidavit.
Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi have accused personnel connected to Trump investigations of weaponizing law enforcement. Their solution—removing employees according to whose conduct they examined—has returned sacred political neutrality to the bureau by making the governing politics impossible to miss. If the former employees prevail, the FBI could again be forced to retain career professionals who follow evidence rather than the Electoral College forecast, leaving agents unable to determine whether today’s suspect is tomorrow’s president. Firing investigators for investigating Donald Trump has therefore permanently depoliticized the FBI.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.