WASHINGTON — The FBI has targeted another round of employees who ran afoul of conservatives, forcing out two veteran agents in Virginia — one of whom is friends with a critic of President Donald Trump — and punishing another in Las Vegas, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Two of the men, Spencer Evans and Stanley Meador, are senior agents who ran FBI field offices in Las Vegas and Richmond. The third, Michael Feinberg, a top deputy in the Norfolk office, had ties to a former agent whom Kash Patel, the FBI director, identified in his book as part of the so-called deep state.
The moves add to the transfers, ousters and demotions that have rippled across the FBI as Patel and Dan Bongino, his No. 2, promise to remake the country’s premier law enforcement agency. The wave of changes, current and former agents say, amount to little more than retaliation, underscoring what they describe as the politicization of the FBI as its leaders seek to mollify Trump’s supporters.
Critics say Patel and Bongino, who are clear about their loyalty to the president and lack the experience of their predecessors, are simply doing what they railed about for years under the previous administration: weaponizing the bureau. In a statement addressing his decision to step down, Feinberg denounced the agency as an organization that had begun “to decay.”
The FBI declined to comment.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner released a statement: “From day one, this administration has shown a willingness to undermine the integrity of our federal agencies in service of political loyalty. Virginians, and all Americans, deserve a Federal Bureau of Investigation that follows the facts and enforces the law without fear or favor, not one reshaped to serve the political whims of the president or his allies. These actions are unlikely to make us any safer.”
The case of Feinberg appears to be another example of retribution, former officials said. In his statement, he said in late May, he was threatened with an investigation and the possibility of a demotion because of his friendship with Peter Strzok, a longtime counterintelligence agent who was fired in 2018.
“I was informed that, because I maintain a friendship with a former FBI executive who is a critic and perceived enemy of the current administration, I would not be receiving any of the promotions for which I was currently being considered, and that I should actually steel myself to be demoted,” he said.
Feinberg added that the FBI intended to have him take a polygraph, or a lie-detector test, about the nature of his ties to Strzok, which he said are entirely social.
Strzok was dismissed after it was disclosed that he had sent text messages disparaging Trump. Over two decades at the FBI, Strzok helped oversee the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails and the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. He later sued the Justice Department and the FBI for violating his privacy by sharing his texts with the news media. As part of the settlement, Strzok received $1.2 million.
Like many other agents, Feinberg and Strzok worked together for years in the counterintelligence division. Feinberg, who is expecting his first child soon, said he had resigned despite the financial hardship of unemployment. He was not eligible for retirement and said he had not received any explanation of “what policy, procedure or institutional norm I had supposedly violated.”
Working for the current FBI was no longer tenable, he said.
Evans and Meador were each singled out for different reasons. Meador incurred the ire of conservatives with a 2023 memo issued by the office he headed in Richmond warning of possible threats posed by “radical-traditionalist” Catholics.
An internal inquiry by the Justice Department concluded that while the memo violated professional standards, it showed “no evidence of malicious intent.”
On Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused the FBI of anti-Catholic bias. He added that he was “determined to get to the bottom of the Richmond memo, and of the FBI’s contempt for oversight in the last administration.”
Meador was put on administrative leave and was expected to retire, although it was not clear when he would do so, the people familiar with the matter said. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Evans angered Trump supporters who accused of him denying religious exemptions for the coronavirus vaccine when he worked as deputy assistant director for human resources at FBI headquarters.
In particular, Evans incited the ire of a former agent who has been deeply critical of the agency, among a group of former employees who had been put on leave and call themselves “The Suspendables.”
Evans survived an initial purge of FBI executives before Patel was confirmed as director, even though he was told at one point that he would be fired and wrote in an email to colleagues that he had been “given no rationale for this decision.”
Evans managed to keep his job, but people familiar with the episode say he is being forced to move to Huntsville, Alabama, where the bureau has a large campus. He is not eligible for retirement.
The Virginian-Pilot contributed to this report.
