Three senior FBI officials who are linked to controversial investigations of conservatives and Catholics are facing reprimands or other sanctions as the new FBI director, Kash Patel, works to consolidate control. One of the officials, Michael Feinberg, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk, Virginia, field office, said in a statement that he resigned due to scrutiny within the bureau of his continued contact with the former FBI counterintelligence official, Peter Strzok.“I was informed that, because I maintain a friendship with a former F.B.I. executive who is a critic and perceived enemy of the current administration, I would not be receiving any of the promotions for which I was currently being considered, and that I should actually steel myself to be demoted,” Mr. Feinberg said in a statement to the New York Times. Mr. Strzok served as a top investigator in high-profile probes of both Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. He was fired in 2018 after a series of personal text messages between him and a FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair, disclosed that the two had vowed to “stop” Donald Trump from being elected and bemoaned the “smell” of Trump supporters during the 2016 election. Mr. Strzok, who emerged as a vocal critic of Mr. Trump after his firing and published a best-selling book about “the threat of Donald J. Trump,” received a $1.2 million settlement from the Biden Department of Justice in July 2024.Mr. Feinberg claimed that bureau officials planned to subject him to a polygraph test about his relationship with Mr. Strzok. The Times recently accused the FBI director, Kash Patel, of fostering a “culture of intimidation” with his “increasingly pervasive use” of lie-detector tests, designed to prevent FBI agents and employees from discussing topics like “decision-making or internal moves.”A thriller writer and former FBI agent, F.X. Reagan, said the use of lie detectors is standard practice by the FBI, especially in high-profile and sensitive investigations.“This may have increased — but it’s always been done,” Mr. Reagan wrote on X.A second official, Stanley Meador, a special agent in charge, was placed on administrative leave, according to reports. Mr. Meador, who led the bureau’s Richmond, Virginia, field office, came under fire after a 2023 internal memo from a team he supervised warned that “radical-traditionalist Catholics” groups were attracting violent extremists to their ranks. The memo, which had been widely distributed within the FBI, recommended developing informants within Catholic groups to monitor for threats. The report was criticized for its “overreliance” on information from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that’s become discredited in the eyes of conservatives for how it classifies some conservative and Christian groups as “hate groups.” The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, this week released internal FBI records that he said proved widespread targeting of Catholics based on “deeply biased” sources. Mr. Grassley accused a former FBI director, Christopher Wray, of repeatedly lying when he denied the FBI was investigating conservatives and Christians as potential violent extremists.“That’s the type of work that I think gives credibility back to the Bureau, us exposing it, us giving Congress the truth,” Mr. Patel said about the release of the internal records during an appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast last week.A third official, Spencer Evans, special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office, is being reassigned to an unspecified role in the FBI’s large Redstone Arsenal campus in Huntsville, Alabama, a destination some FBI personnel find undesirable. Mr. Evans was fired earlier this year as part of the Department of Justice’s review of Mr. Wray’s top officials, though he was later rehired.A former agent, Kyle Seraphin, had accused Mr. Evans of denying him religious accommodations that would excuse him from receiving a mandatory Covid-19 vaccination. Mr Seraphin is among a group of ex-agents who call themselves “The Suspendables” for being punished by the bureau for political reasons. In a post on X in April, Mr. Seraphin said he had been asked by Mr. Patel — then a nominee for FBI director — about the “people in the FBI who were problems.”Mr. Seraphin identified Mr. Evans, whom he called “a Deep State shill,” as one such person.“Kash said ‘Gone,’” Mr. Seraphin wrote on X.An FBI representative could not be reached for comment.On the Joe Rogan podcast, Mr. Patel praised his agents for “crushing it.”“My job is easy. What they’re doing is hard. Me moving people around the country, taking them from their families, uprooting them, and everybody’s like, that’s the mission. That’s what we’re here to do,” Mr. Patel said.
