FBI Director Kash Patel has directed roughly 260 intelligence analysts from around the country to spend their time on what an internal memo called a “priority investigation” in Atlanta: a probe of Georgia's 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes. Each analyst is required to complete 708 record checks by July 17.
Two Atlanta-based analysts, a married couple, refused. They told colleagues they did not believe the investigation was justified under FBI and Justice Department policy. They were escorted out of their office and fired.
The premise has already failed every prior test. Multiple investigations, including by Georgia's own Republican officials, found no fraud capable of changing the 2020 result. When the FBI seized 600 boxes of ballots and election materials in January, the affidavit supporting the search warrant included claims that had already been debunked by those Republican-led inquiries. A federal judge recently rejected a related Justice Department subpoena for election workers' names as “unreasonable.”
Diverting hundreds of analysts to relitigate a settled election, and firing the ones who object, turns the FBI's intelligence workforce toward the president's grievance rather than its mission. Sen. Mark Warner: “This diversion of significant FBI resources towards a political investigation threatens the purpose of its mission” (see Trump Appoints Kash Patel, Whose Book Lists 60 'Enemies' to Target, as FBI Director, The DOJ Subpoenaed Fulton County for the Home Addresses and Phone Numbers of Nearly 3,000 People Who Worked the 2020 Election. A Trump-Appointed Judge Quashed It. and Trump's New Intelligence Chief Starts Firing Dozens of Officials as Trump Says He Expects Him to 'Find Out Some Things About the Rigged Elections').