Last week, FBI Director Kash Patel fired roughly a dozen agents and staff members who once had ties to an investigation of Donald Trump. Among them were agents who specialized in addressing threats from Iran and its proxies.
Three days after the firings began, the United States was bombarding Iran.
The fighting abroad poses a major test for a Justice Department and FBI reeling from mass firings, reassignments and departures during Trump’s 14 months in office for his second term, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity either out of concern about retaliation or to discuss continuing investigations.
The FBI and Justice Department still have skilled leaders in many key national security positions, the people said, but they warned that the bench of expertise has significantly thinned over the past year, and the number of leaders with deep expertise in handling domestic threats has diminished.
Thinner ranks, especially of experienced staff members, can matter in multiple ways, the current and former officials said.
When the U.S. is engaged in conflict abroad, domestic law enforcement goes into high alert. FBI agents with national security experience sift through scores of possible threats, determining which are worth investigating further, which may be tied to terrorist groups — and which do not need to be followed up on.
For serious threats, FBI agents often coordinate with Justice Department prosecutors to determine whether and how to execute warrants to surveil and arrest people before any possible violence occurs.
Today, experienced agents and prosecutors are more scarce. At the FBI, the recent terminations came on top of scores of firings of agents and field-office leaders that Patel has ordered during his tenure, often without explanation.
One former prosecutor, who asked to remain anonymous to broadly discuss an investigation that has not been made public, said he worked last year with more than a half-dozen FBI agents to surveil a man who officials feared may have been planning a violent attack.
FBI agents surveilled the man 24/7, the former prosecutor said. But Patel reassigned those agents to work on immigration, and the FBI’s capabilities to trail that suspect around the clock waned, the prosecutor said.
As of October, roughly 25 percent of FBI agents had been assigned to immigration enforcement, stretching thin an already busy workforce.
Each termination of an experienced agent also rids the bureau of years of source building, the current and former officials said.
It’s impossible to know for sure what impact such departures have on the ability to track threats, they said. But, they said, each of the Iranian experts the FBI has lost probably had sources in and around Iranian American communities that they used to help monitor specific threats and people. Such source relationships, which are built on trust, cannot easily be transferred and are typically severed when agents leave.
FBI spokesman Ben Williamson defended the bureau on social media. The recent firing of agents happened because “they acted unethically and violated the mission,” he said, adding that three agents with Iran expertise were ousted. The bureau did not answer questions about how the agents acted unethically or violated the FBI’s mission.
“While we do not comment on personnel matters, the FBI maintains a robust counterintelligence operation, with personnel all over the country, who delivered record results in 2025 — including a 35% increase in counterintelligence arrests, six of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives captured, and multiple foiled terrorism plots just in December alone,” Williamson said in a statement. “Our teams remain fully engaged across the country and prepared to mobilize any security assets needed to assist federal partners — as well as state and local law enforcement.”
There’s no question, however, that the administration’s firings across the Justice Department and FBI have created big gaps in expertise across the law enforcement agency. The staffing losses have been widespread, hitting U.S. attorneys offices, FBI field offices and critical divisions at headquarters in Washington. The Justice Department has struggled to fill many of these slots with qualified people, The Washington Post has reported.
The firings started on Day One of the Trump administration. Top Justice Department leaders pushed out Bruce Swartz, the deputy for international affairs in the criminal division, who had worked at the department for decades. Michael Nordwall, who headed the FBI’s criminal and cyber investigations division, and Robert Wells, whose portfolio included all of national security for the FBI, were also pushed out.
At the time, The Post reported that Brian Driscoll — the acting FBI director while Patel was awaiting Senate confirmation — fought to keep Nordwall and Wells, saying their expertise was needed. Driscoll lost that fight. He subsequently was also pushed out by Patel.
George Toscas — a veteran national security prosecutor who, in previous administrations, would have been overseeing the threats cases — was also ousted.
Some of the removed leaders have been replaced with others who have years of experience in the department, the people interviewed said. In many cases, however, talented employees were promoted before they otherwise would have been, cutting short their training for senior positions. Others, they said, are unqualified for their jobs.
Further stretching the national security leadership, Matthew Blue — the chief of the Justice Department’s counterterrorism section — is an Air Force veteran who has been serving in the D.C. National Guard since August. Trump deployed the D.C. National Guard to tackle “out of control” crime in the nation’s capital.
One of Blue’s deputy chiefs, a longtime Justice Department prosecutor, has been serving as acting chief in his absence.
Firings in other parts of the Justice Department can also have a ripple effect. Kyle Boynton — a former Civil Rights Division prosecutor and FBI agent who left the Justice Department in 2025 — noted that prosecutors who have reason to fear a person is planning a violent act can sometimes bring charges of an attempt to commit a hate crime before they carry out a violent attack. That can be a critical tool in preventing attacks, he said.
As a prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division, Boynton said he would receive calls from FBI agents when they were tracking a threat against a synagogue, for example. He would help determine what search warrants or surveillance measures they could legally request. Boynton said he fears that few people remain in the division’s criminal section who have handled such investigations.
The entire leadership of the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division has departed or been ousted in recent months, two people familiar with staffing in the division said.
“It requires an enormous amount of manpower to track people before they commit a crime,” Boynton said. “What you are looking for is evidence of intent and evidence that they have taken substantial steps in furtherance of intent. That requires an enormous amount of attention and scrutiny by FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors.”
Current and former Justice Department attorneys said they are frustrated that the Trump administration, including Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, did not appear to carefully consider the long-term ramifications of their staffing decisions.
“We are now in a heightened-threat situation, not just in the Mideast but also here in the U.S. Iran, acting through its proxies, has long sought to carry out a terrorist attack or assassination inside the country,” said one longtime former senior National Security official.
“The danger today is that we have lost so much of our capability to uncover and stop such an attack,” the official said. “We have let down our guard at the worst time.”
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