A person who has been affiliated with Elon Musk Spacex and a former assistant of one of the most difficult Congress critics of the FBI is working as advisors of the office director, four current and previous officials of the FBI tell NBC News.
The two are among a group of at least four people who have been brought to the FBI to advise its director, the current and previous officials said. At least two of the new advisors are agents retired from the FBI, including one, Tom Ferguson, who worked as an assistant to the representative Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a firm Trump ally and Vocal critic of the FBI.
The arrival of the person who has been affiliated with space X has not been previously reported. NBC News has not confirmed the name of the person. A Spacex spokesman did not respond to a comment request.
It is not clear who facilitated the arrival of the new advisors, nor in which areas they are focusing. A Kash Patel spokesman, the election of President Trump for the director of the FBI, did not respond to a request for comments. Nor the FBI. The Patel Senate Confirmation Hearing will take place on Thursday.
The former FBI officials said that the new advisors have caused concerns that people with ties with partisan political figures help administer the most powerful law agency in the nation. While some FBI officials reported on the agreement with the hope that it may result in the promulgation of necessary reforms, others fear a commitment of the decades of the Office to distance themselves from politics.
Unlike the Justice Department, the FBI has no politicians designated other than its director, who is chosen by the president for what is supposed to be a period of 10 years. Like the CIA, almost everyone else working in the FBI is a career official.
That structure was created after the 1972 death of the director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover, who had agents made in politics for decades, covert and stained political leaders and groups, from the extreme right of the John Birch society to the leader to the leader of civil rights Martin Luther King.
Rob D’Amico, a former FBI agent who served in the hostage rescue team of the office and in Afghanistan, said they have told him that strangers are there to advise the FBI on how to reform themselves, including sending of employees of the headquarters to the field.
“That is absolutely necessary,” he said. “Things have focused too much on the headquarters and when the headquarters are in DC, the natural thing that happens in DC is that things become policies.”
However, said D’Amico, it is not normal to have people with ties with partisan political figures on the seventh floor, since FBI employees call the director’s office.
“This will have to be done very carefully,” said D’Amico. “How does that chain of command work? You must be very careful not to become the Russian political officer in a Russian nuclear submarine, enforcing the discipline of the party. “
New advisors To the director of the FBI
Gregory Mentzer, another former FBI agent, currently works at the FBI director’s office, according to his LinkedIn profile. Mentzer, who retired as an agent of the FBI in 2018 and had been working as a firearms instructor at the FBI Academy, simply lists his affiliation as “director’s office, FBI.” Mentzer did not respond to a message sent through LinkedIn.
Ferguson, the retired agent of the FBI and former assistant of the representative Jordan, is listed as “senior policy advisor, director’s advisory team”, in his LinkedIn profile. Asked by NBC News through LinkedIn about his role in the FBI, Ferguson replied that “he would return home to help.”
Ferguson said in a LinkedIn post that he was leaving his position in the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives to serve “in the new administration.” He called his work there the “honor of a life” and added: “Equally incredible was the opportunity to work and for Jim Jordan, a legend of my great native state of Oh.”
Ferguson sent the questions to a spokesman for the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives, who declined to comment. CNN previously reported Ferguson’s hiring.
Jordan, the president of the Judicial Committee of the Chamber, has regularly accused the FBI, without citing specific evidence, of being a corrupt tool of the Biden administration. He said the FBI helped suppress a story about Hunter Biden’s portable computer and retaliates against the complainants.
Jordan says that the FBI has been involved in politically motivated investigations from Trump, highlighting former director James Comment and his main assistants for criticism.
Jordan is also a vocal defender of Trump’s candidate, Patel, who qualified the FBI ” undermine Trump.
Ferguson has waded strongly in some of the most divisive cultural war problems in LinkedIn publications, including debates about race and gender.
“The overwhelming majority of Americans, including my family, is tired of having the false narrative of” systemic racism “forced by our throats,” Ferguson wrote in a 2021 position that criticizes Disney’s company for his posture “Woke” .
According to news reports and publications on social networks, Ferguson participated in the protests of the School Board in Fairfax County, Virginia, some of which received national coverage.
In 2022, he spoke with Fox News in a protest about his objections to changes in sexual editing policies, saying that it seemed “very inappropriate” that schools “address these political buttons, very dynamic and social , in such such an early age. ”
Jordan has also disseminated exaggerated statements about a memorandum of the Department of Justice that was destined to allow the FBI to help school districts with threats, and some falsely claim that federal authorities were making parents national terrorists.
The former FBI director, Chris Wray, whom Trump appointed the position in 2017, said the office “had never been in the business of investigating the discourse or police discourse at the meetings of the school board or anywhere else, anywhere else, And that we will never be. ”
The FBI is currently being directed by an interim director appointed by Trump, an employee of the career office who directs his Newark office, while waiting for a confirmation vote on Patel. Wray recently resigned after Trump made it clear that he would replace him.
Concern among former officials
The former FBI officials tell NBC News that it is necessary for the office to be amended and modified, particularly in the digital age as cyber threats from China and other rivals grow.
A former superior FBI official, who requested anonymity to be able to speak frankly, said the statements that the office was politicized were exaggerated.
“I get the counter-narrative:” The place is so messy that it is so politicized that we need to turn it over and fix everything, “he said. “But give me an example of where the organization was wrong … Where is the evidence? It is a solution in search of a problem. ”
A second former FBI official who asked not to be appointed, citing reprisal fears, said modernization is necessary in the office but expressed concern about political loyalty evidence.
“There is a difference between the reforms that make the office more effective and efficient,” he said, “instead of infusing a unilateral ideology and purging people who do not share that point of view.”
Frank Figliuzzi, a NBC news collaborator who withdrew as head of the FBI counterintelligence division after a long career, including many high -level positions, said the agreement was problematic to his face.
“We should all support any attempt to make healthy reforms in the agency of application of the most powerful law of the nation,” said Figliuzzi, but warned, “there is a serious perception that it is much more about politics than applying the laws of our nation”.
