The FBI Agent Who Accidentally Became a Hero for the Trump Resistance

For 18 years as an FBI agent, Brian Driscoll had gone about his business quietly, even when that business was plenty dramatic, such as participating in hostage-rescue missions everywhere from Alabama to Afghanistan. “Drizz,” as he’s known among friends, proved to be as talented a leader behind a desk as he was in a war zone, eventually leading the FBI’s Newark field office until a mistake promoted him even higher.

In January, the incoming Trump administration was expected to install Robert Kissane, Driscoll’s colleague and friend, as acting FBI director, replacing Christopher Wray. But somehow Driscoll was listed as the new chief, with Kissane as the acting number two official, and the apparent oversight was never corrected.

That twist of fate put Driscoll in the middle of a firestorm when Trump’s team demanded the names of all the agents involved with the January 6 investigations, a seeming prelude to a purge. Driscoll refused. Loudly. Emil Bove, the Department of Justice official in charge of the offensive, accused the FBI’s acting leadership of “insubordination.”

Word of the confrontation soon circulated widely among current and former FBI agents; some passed around social media tributes that depicted “Saint Driz” or asked, “What Would Drizz Do?” The fact that 45-year-old Driscoll is blessed with a head of extravagantly curly dark hair and a goatee out of The Three Musketeers only strengthened his cult status.

As if all that weren’t surprising enough, here’s the real stunner: Drizz is still on the job. Even after the firings of other insufficiently loyal DOJ employees and the confirmation of Kash Patel as FBI director—a man who has proudly published a list of his political enemies—Driscoll is still reporting for work at the J. Edgar Hoover Building. “I’m shocked they haven’t gotten rid of him,” an FBI veteran who has worked with Driscoll says.

Instead, Driscoll is now assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, which handles highly dangerous incidents like riots, terrorist attacks, and takings of hostages. That the ultra-competent Driscoll has so far survived the Trump assault on government is only a provisionally optimistic sign, however. “There’s still a lot of turmoil throughout the organization,” the FBI veteran says. One example is the recent replacing of multiple field office heads; another is the realignment of the bureau into Eastern, central, and Western divisions, deemphasizing the bureaucratic role of FBI headquarters in Washington, which could prove beneficial.

Patel and his newly installed deputy director, Dan Bongino, are stirring up internal commotion in ways beyond juggling personnel. Patel has reportedly floated teaming up with the Ultimate Fighting Championship to help with the FBI’s physical training. Bongino, a onetime Secret Service agent turned successful conservative podcaster, spent years harshly criticizing FBI agents. Not long after arriving in his new position, though, Bongino sent out an email saying it was “an incredible privilege to be here”—a wise, if cynical, shift in tone, given that Bongino is the beneficiary of an unprecedented security detail that could require as many as 20 FBI agents. Two sources say that during a recent tour of the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, Virginia, Bongino grappled on a wrestling mat with a defensive-tactics instructor, sustaining an arm injury. The FBI declined to comment.

Yet any personal foibles are less meaningful than how the Trump team is using the bureau’s resources, deploying them in pursuit of the administration’s policy priorities and obsessions. Attorney General Pam Bondi had touted the publication of documents related to dead sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. When revelations didn’t materialize in the first batch of released documents, she blamed the FBI’s New York field office, the bureau’s largest outpost, for failing to disclose all the files. That office typically devotes the bulk of its time to counterterrorism and public corruption investigations, but lately agents in New York—and at least one other office—have burned up hundreds of hours reviewing the Epstein files. Nothing substantial has emerged publicly.

FBI agents, along with staff from other agencies, have been enlisted by the Department of Homeland Security to help conduct “welfare checks” on migrant children who entered the United States without their parents. “A lot of people are getting pulled off other assignments to do that shit,” an FBI insider says. Immigration advocates are suspicious that the checks are a pretext to gather information for deportations. “The welfare checks are a tool and a tactic to entrap people,” says Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition.

Drizz wasn’t looking to become a resistance hero earlier this year, and he hasn’t been pulled into any overtly political territory since then, which is how he prefers things. Driscoll’s time in the spotlight, though, may have protected him from being fired, at least in the short term. “Drizz is popular, and maybe they wanted to tone down the drama a little bit,” the bureau veteran says. “But people are looking for other options because nobody has any trust or confidence in what’s next. The thinking for a lot of FBI people is, Just weather the storm, protect the agency as much as you can, and hopefully this too will pass.”

Which makes sense from a self-preservation perspective. But as Trump gallops toward authoritarianism, daring other American institutions to try to stop him, the moment is likely coming when Drizz—or other similarly unlikely heroes—will again need to take a stand.