Goodbye to All That – My Resignation from the FBI | Hacker News Reader

Goodbye to All That – My Resignation from the FBI

lawfaremedia.org

82 pointsruph12327 comments

If you make it far enough, you get to the part where they talk about what they are going to do about it.

> I’m looking forward to exploring all of these issues over the next few months in writing, in engagements with the public, and by other means.

It seems they don’t believe that their name will be added to the list as a “persona non grata” who will be toxic for others to associate with. For the sake of democracy, I certainly hope they will not be another name on the list.

> In that way, I hope, I can continue my service to the United States and—of equal importance to me, at this point in my life—to those who still carry FBI credentials.

I feel like political repression is somewhere in the handbook of how to run an autocracy.

> I had served as a field supervisor over a counterintelligence squad in the Washington Field Office.

Counter-intel has a shelf life of around three months in the DC area. It isn't like there weren't multiple opportunities for the FEEB to do something. Oleg Deripaska had multiple properties in the US, including one in NYC and one across the street from Kellyanne Conway near 30th and Massachusetts Ave in DC. Deripaska visited the US on a diplomatic passport multiple times in 2017-2018 and no-one found anything on him? And Charles McGonigal, a retired NYC FBI agent pleaded guilty in 2023 to providing services to Deripaska, who was under US sanctions?

So…they wanted him to take a polygraph interview regarding the nature of his relationship with Peter Strzok, and he resigned instead, did I understand that correctly?

They informed him of an intent to demote him if he remained in the FBI, even taking the polygraph. The alternative to demotion was to resign. So he resigned, and now he's speaking out about it.

The Bluesky link on his bio tells you everything you need to know.

He was a senior G-man. He knows the polygraph is bullshit.

True, but you also have former agents who complain that they get fired for things w/o having taken a poly. So, it seems, for some, passing a poly as proof they don’t do something wrong is important.

Why go through the stress and performative dance of a poly when there's zero upside? He admitted to being a friend and (according to the article) that's alone enough to demote and block advancement.

Polys are also subjective. They keep asking the same questions over and over again until there's some indication they can point to and say you're lying. It might be a sneeze, cough, or a deep breath at the wrong time. It's also generally a multi hour to multi day ordeal. I wouldn't bother if I was them.

Articles like this are always self serving. We only know details that the author chose to expose and we only have the authors word that those were the only and true reason for the action.

I am skeptical that I am hearing a complete and true accounting of the facts and reasons for the action.

Note that I am not impugning the author, but everyone is the hero or the victim of their own story, and even if everything said was a true and complete accounting of the author’s experience, there might have been reasons (good or nefarious) for the action that were not disclosed to them.

What is the reason you wrote your comment?

Like, if life were a narrative, who would you be?

Look at the other comments. The trend in the other comments is that the article was accepted as a true and accurate representation of events and that therefore the current FBI administration is corrupt and has politicized the bureau.

That might or might not be true, but the article is almost certainly biased to support that narrative, true or not. I was cautioning that the article not be taken on faith.

> How did Bongino find out about this private friendship? I honestly don’t know.

So this dude literally worked for THE US domestic intelligence gathering agency and he has no idea how they found out about his friendship to someone who has been all over the news for 9 years for his investigative targeting of the current president?

I mean demotion due to the friendship…or perhaps he is just not the brightest bulb in the bureau?

I don’t take it as “I can’t fathom how this happened” so much as “I don’t know, specifically, if I was being investigated, if he was, or if this was just ancillary capriciousness”.

Seems weird to immediately assume he’s stupider than you are.

I didn’t write those words and choose to publish them, he chose to do that.

Whether it’s meant as: “Can’t fathom how this happened”, “I don’t know how, specifically”, or “I can’t imagine how they found out”…it’s a totally boneheaded thing to write and publicly publish if you are an FBI agent. We make assessments about people’s capabilities every day based on what they say and do. This is no different.

I think, at some level, one should assume that one’s readers are capable of understanding context and nuance, and that every word won’t be taken literally by the vast majority of readers.

You can be mad at the writer, if it makes you feel better, I guess, but this was pretty clear writing from my point of view.

I came out of that article impressed with the eloquence of his prose. I'm gobsmacked to learn that someone thinks that's bad writing.

I didn’t say it was bad writing. I am saying that within it he expressed a disbelief at something that given his position, was absurd. Even if it was done for some sort of dramatic effect, it caused me to doubt the sincerity and accuracy of the rest of the article.

I’m not mad at the writer, I am indifferent. However, because of that embellishment or “flourish”, I doubt the rest of the situation occurred as described.

If you want people to take your story seriously, why would you disqualify yourself in such a way in the beginning of the article?

He is concerned about the politician of the FBI, yet it has already been used as a political weapon long before Trump's current reign. Did FBI not raid journalists involved in covering the Hunter Biden laptop story and attempt to aid in covering this up? That's one large example of the past politically charged actions from the FBI that occurred prior to Trump against the "right".

It seems that his problem is that he does not agree with it now being used against the "side" he stands with, rather than that he disagrees with it being used politically at all. I'd agree that it often is used for political purposes, but I would not agree that this only started in Trump's current term. It's been used by both sides in this way.

> Did FBI not raid journalists involved in covering the Hunter Biden laptop story and attempt to aid in covering this up?

Did they? Why not just assert what you believe, instead of giving it this weird air of deniability?

Do you believe that the Hunter Biden “story” is similar or dissimilar to firing political and personal enemies of appointees?

I'd say they are both bad, though I actually view it as worse when going after journalists, especially when it relates to a story surrounding the family of a politician running for president. The FBI also lied to social media companies in order to get them to remove stories about it, despite knowing the story was true: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/testimony-r...

And here is the story about the raid of the journalist: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/13/raid-veritas-okeefe...

I really struggle with equivocating these things, because I’m just going to point out, that both of these stories are incredibly one sided, they hurt Democrats and help Republicans. In fact, looking only in retrospect, I would say the hunter biden laptop suppression was more likely to be a false flag, given who it helped and who it hurt.

But how is it that no matter who politicizes anything, it’s always actually one sides fault. And, like you implied, who cares if Republicans succeed in consistently and repetitively politicizing the FBI, because the Democrats may have done it once in a way that royally backfired. Two wrongs make a right.

But I love how Democrats keep getting punished for the one story that has helped Republicans more than any other of the past decade.

It's not about one side winning over the other. The problem is that the author of this article is attempting to make it sound like the problem only started when Trump got into power. What I am trying to point out is that this has been a problem for a while, and was a tool used recently to try to aid democrats getting into power and to censor speech on social media platforms under the guise of "misinformation" (despite them knowing it was not).

I personally do view governmental control of speech and attacks on journalists to be pretty severe in the grand scheme of things. I don't want either side to be using the FBI for this, but I don't like the authors non-genuine attempt at making it seem like this is a Trump specific problem. They did not speak out about it before, they only had a problem with it when it impacted them.

How did it possibly aid democrats??? They are less popular than ever and Trump won. Every thing the Democrats have been accused of help Republicans. Everything the Republicans are accused of help Republicans.

Trump couldn’t have planned a better tactic than trying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story if he tried.

> On May 31 of this year, in a series of phone calls beginning at nine in the morning and ending that afternoon, the newly installed Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Norfolk Field Office, Dominique Evans, made clear to me that, at the direction of Dan Bongino, my career with the organization had—for all intents and purposes—come to an end.

Doesn’t sound like a resignation

Splitting hairs. It’s a resignation if they haven’t formally fired the person, which it sounds like they hadn’t.

And it’s beside the point, which is that right-wing cable news gasbags are now running the country.

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