Trump Gutted Gun Violence Funding in Time for Mass Shooting Summer

Michael Feinberg, who left the bureau in June after 15 years, claimed he was denied a promotion after he decided to maintain ties with his former colleague Peter Strzok. Strzok was fired from the FBI during Donald Trump’s first term for sending text messages that allegedly disparaged the MAGA leader, landing him on FBI Director Kash Patel’s notorious enemies list.

Moving up in the agency, according to Feinberg, was practically a done deal. Feinberg, who had been serving as the acting assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s Norfolk field office, was already preparing to move to the FBI’s headquarters in Washington in anticipation of the promotion. But the newly installed Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans put a pin on that on May 31. Over a series of phone calls, Evans revealed that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had left Feinberg with two options: get demoted or resign, he recalled in a personal essay published earlier this month to LawFare. Feinberg chose the latter—five years before he was eligible for retirement and a pension.

“Furthermore, she told me, I would be asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, and (as I was quietly informed by another, friendlier senior employee) what could only be described as a latter-day struggle session,” Feinberg wrote. “I would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty as part of the FBI’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence.”