David Laufman Comments on FBI Appointments in Reuters

In a memo on Sunday evening, the FBI Agents Association told its 14,000 members that new director Kash Patel had assured them that he would follow tradition and name a career special agent with operational expertise as his deputy director.

"Director Patel agreed," said the memo, which Reuters reviewed.

An hour after the memo was sent, Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who has never been an FBI agent and who has called the agency “irredeemably corrupt,” was named to serve as Patel’s deputy director. That position oversees day-to-day operations and carries enormous power to supervise investigations across the nation.

The unprecedented appointment of two loyalists to President Donald Trump has rattled the FBI community and lawyers who worry that their lack of experience and overt statements supporting retribution for the president’s critics could presage a misuse of the nation’s most prominent investigative agency, according to 14 former FBI employees and prosecutors interviewed by Reuters.

“FBI agents’ oaths to support and defend the Constitution will be tested as never before,” said David Laufman, [Senior Counsel at Caplin & Drysdale] who worked with FBI agents on sensitive investigations for decades, including as chief of counterintelligence for the Justice Department.

Laufman said the appointments of Patel and Bongino “raise alarming questions about whether the FBI will wholly adhere to the rule of law, or instead will become a political investigative tool of the White House.”

For the complete article, please visit Reuters' website.