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President Trump’s directive is supposed to exempt national security and public safety positions, but the F.B.I. has put an immediate hiring freeze in place.
- Jan. 26, 2025, 12:23 p.m. ET
The F.B.I. has taken drastic steps to comply with President Trump’s hiring freeze, causing deep uncertainty in the bureau’s ranks and rattling new employees.
The moves appear at odds with the executive order that the president issued hours after taking office, which specifies that such a freeze would not apply to national security or public safety officials. Given that one of the F.B.I.’s core missions is to safeguard against terrorism and the possibility of other threats, it remains unclear why the bureau would not be exempt.
Regardless the steps are all but certain to hobble the agency’s efforts to recruit, retain and train employees.
The bureau’s human resources division, in an internal memo issued on Friday, detailed the moves it was taking as a result of the order, including supplying the White House with a list of probationary employees.
Employees’ concerns have only been compounded by the deep suspicion and relentless attacks President Trump and his pick to be the agency’s director, Kash Patel, have leveled at the bureau over its previous criminal investigations that ensnared Mr. Trump. Mr. Patel has promised to turn F.B.I. headquarters into a museum of the “deep state,” dismantle the bureau intelligence cadre and slash the general counsel’s office, which provides the director with key legal advice.
Already on edge, current F.B.I. employees wonder whether the directive signals the administration’s intent to gut parts of the country’s premier law enforcement agency, even as Mr. Trump has pushed to rapidly overhaul the federal bureaucracy.
