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  "path": "/post/210309/ex-fib-agent-kash-patel-purges-donald-trump",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-12T16:39:33.000Z",
  "site": "https://newrepublic.com",
  "tags": [
    "Breaking News",
    "Politics",
    "Republican Party",
    "Donald Trump",
    "FBI",
    "FBI Director",
    "Kash Patel",
    "firing",
    "January 6",
    "Capitol Riot",
    "insurrection",
    "trump indictment",
    "classified documents",
    "wasn’t corrected",
    "confirmed",
    "CNN",
    "insubordination",
    "sued"
  ],
  "textContent": "The FBI is conducting loyalty tests to determine who belongs in the bureau’s rank and file, according to the last FBI chief.\n\nBrian Driscoll was a decorated FBI agent with 18 years at the agency under his belt before he was offered the bureau’s number two job at the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term. A clerical error would ultimately place Driscoll at the top of the agency, making him the bureau’s acting director—an oversight that wasn’t corrected until the Senate confirmed Kash Patel at the end of February.\n\nDriscoll wasn’t keen to take the reins of the FBI but told CNN Tuesday that he agreed to take the job after he was informed it was between him and a political appointee.\n\nYet as the weeks bore on, the questions he fielded from incoming Trump officials began to concern him. They inquired about his political affiliations, who he voted for, when he began supporting Trump, and if he supported a Democrat in recent elections.\n\nPatel was more blunt. The onboarding wouldn’t be an issue so long as Driscoll wasn’t active on social media, didn’t donate to the Democratic Party, and didn’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Driscoll recalled Patel saying.\n\n“It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” Driscoll told CNN.\n\nDriscoll met with Patel after the latter had been confirmed. Patel flatly said that “the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,” Driscoll recalled.\n\nThe issue came to a head two weeks after Trump’s inauguration. When the White House demanded the names of some 6,000 bureau staff who were involved in the January 6 probe, Driscoll refused, sparking accusations from then–Justice Department official Emil Bove that there was “insubordination” among the FBI’s leadership.\n\nDriscoll said that when he confronted Bove about the need for a list, Bove blamed it on “cultural rot in the FBI.”\n\n“I was telling them this is wrong,” Driscoll told CNN.\n\nDriscoll was fired months later, in August, but the purge hasn’t quieted down for those left behind at the bureau. The agency, according to Driscoll, is still focused on punishing or removing any FBI agents who could be perceived as threats to the president’s agenda, at the White House’s behest. That includes sacking employees who were involved in investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, as well as employees involved in Trump’s classified documents probe.\n\nDriscoll is one of three former senior FBI agents who have sued the Trump administration for firing them as part of a “campaign of retribution.” That lawsuit is ongoing.",
  "title": "Ex–FBI Agent Confirms What We All Suspected About Kash Patel’s Purges"
}