Since retaking the presidency, Donald Trump and his administration have purged the Justice Department and some law-enforcement agencies of career officials. One of them, David Sundberg, served in the FBI for more than 20 years, was once in charge of the Washington field office and led the probe into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Sundberg says the Bureau under Director Kash Patel has been weakened.
“Unfortunately, I think some of the capabilities have been depleted,” Sundberg said. “There are less personnel. But additionally, there’s a loss of expertise, and I think we are seeing that from both the working conditions in the FBI and also the removal of agents and analysts simply because they were assigned to a case that Director Kash Patel thinks is politically a disadvantage.”
Sundberg emphasized that line agents do not choose their assignments. Over careers they build subject-matter expertise — especially on national security — and are expected to follow assignments. He said many agents and analysts have been fired without due process for working cases the administration dislikes, which has removed experts who connected the FBI with the broader intelligence community.
“We are now in a conflict with Iran, and we’ve lost experts inside the FBI who both had the expertise as well as the connectivity across the intelligence community to combat threats of Middle Eastern espionage and other attempts to affect the U.S.,” Sundberg said. Without those people, he warned, the Bureau has fewer practitioners capable of finding and interdicting threats before they arrive in the United States.
When asked whether the purge has made the country more dangerous, Sundberg said the FBI “certainly has less people who know how to find those threats as far away as possible so we can interdict them before they’re here.” He described Iran as a persistent counterintelligence threat with significant cyber capabilities and efforts to penetrate U.S. systems.
Sundberg said the agents removed fell into a specific category: those who had worked cases that looked at actions by the president. “They were cases that looked at the actions of the president, and so they don’t like those cases,” he said. He noted that public corruption investigations have long been a part of the FBI’s work — investigating both Republicans and Democrats at local, state and federal levels — and agents expect to do that work “without fear or favor.”
Asked about the difference leadership at the top makes for field offices and agents, Sundberg replied that it matters tremendously. He said it’s essential to keep politics outside the FBI to preserve continuity in criminal and national security work. “There are so many ways that foreign adversaries try to get at this nation,” he said. Insulating investigators and analysts from political interference allows them to carry out investigations across administrations.
Sundberg compared the Bureau’s current morale unfavorably to the period after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. He said morale is worse now because career employees who dedicated their lives to the FBI are working in an environment where colleagues can be fired simply for having been assigned to a case the director views unfavorably. That dynamic, he said, creates two perverse incentives: agents may fear assignment to legitimate cases, and others may feel pressure to avoid opening warranted matters that could be politically inconvenient.
“Picture a situation in which people who have dedicated their adult lives to the mission of the FBI, to defending the nation, are now working in an environment in which their colleagues have been fired simply for being assigned to the wrong case. That means everyone working in the FBI is wondering, am I going to get assigned to the wrong case?” Sundberg said.
Sundberg also warned that removals have included analysts whose expertise and community-wide connections were important for counterintelligence and national security, leaving gaps at a time of international tensions. He said some removals appear to be retribution against employees who worked on matters involving the president, even as the FBI continues to handle public corruption across the political spectrum.
Sundberg, a former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, said he did not come to the interview to promote his congressional candidacy, but he noted he is running for Congress. He expressed concern that politicizing personnel decisions undermines the FBI’s ability to protect the country and called for keeping politics out of investigative work so agents can focus on threats without fear or favor.