Emily Bazelon

So she's coming in super eager, but she can also see quickly that this is not business as usual.

And one of the first orders that really got people's attention was a big order to move hundreds of field agents out from Washington into the field offices.

And that wasn't necessarily a bad idea.

There were a lot of FBI insiders who said, yeah, sure, the Bureau has become too conservative.

heavy in D.C.

and we could disperse people and that might be more effective.

But the way they did it seemed like kind of random and arbitrary and not a lot of thought was going into, well, how do we actually have these people land all over the country in a way that they're going to really be able to do their jobs?

So this was a signal to Tanya that Patel is not going to be taking detailed briefings and kind of coloring inside the lines.

He's going to be moving ahead, making maybe abrupt and sudden decisions that affect how investigations are run without the kind of traditional, very sober and considered analysis that the bureau is used to providing.

And it's not just Tanya Ugoretz who's concerned in these early days.

I mean, this is widespread all over the bureau area.

And one of our other sources, John Sullivan, who's also in the intelligence division, he was a section chief there, told us a lot about this period and what he was worried about.

And a real turning point for him, a big deal in the bureau generally, was when Patel and Trump choose Dan Bongino as the number two in the agency.

He's going to be right under Patel.

He's seeing these two new leaders together make a big push for optics.

And so one thing that happened early on is that apparently Trump was watching footage or saw a picture of a raid and he didn't see any flak jackets.

And that becomes something that's of great concern.

Yeah, it's like a performance.

And you really see this with the Charlie Kirk investigation.

And they're actually making mistakes.