It Is Happening Every Day, Every Where
President Trump said workers would be “sort of semi-fired” or fired if they didn’t comply. The Office of Personnel Management said responses were voluntary. Federal workers said they didn’t know what to do.
The choice of Dan Bongino is a radical departure from the bureau’s history of having a veteran agent serve in the key role that oversees operations.
The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and others told employees not to respond to a directive from Mr. Musk to summarize their accomplishments.
The timeline for identifying the agents and employees who would move from the Washington area to field offices and a sprawling campus in Huntsville, Ala., was not immediately clear.
The Senate will hold a final vote on President Trump’s pick for F.B.I. director, which could put Kash Patel in charge of the powerful law enforcement agency.
During President Trump’s first term, demanding personal loyalty didn’t always work; stocking top jobs with loyalists is the tack now. At the F.B.I., this entails bucking its institutional history.
President Trump’s directive is supposed to exempt national security and public safety positions, but the F.B.I. has put an immediate hiring freeze in place.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which the White House has threatened to purge, called for new limits on the list in a report issued on Friday.
Kash Patel’s public praise of the QAnon conspiracy theory suggests he sees its adherents more as an audience to be courted rather than an ideology to follow.
Kash Patel, Donald J. Trump’s choice to run the bureau, has made a series of spurious assertions about the Russia, Jan. 6 and classified documents inquiries.