Strzok friend who resigned defends him and Crossfire Hurricane, compares Patel’s FBI to KGB & Nazis

A former FBI agent and friend of Peter Strzok who recently resigned from the bureau after he says his relationship with the disgraced ex-FBI official was scrutinized by Dan Bongino is now defending Crossfire Hurricane, suggesting Donald Trump was in contact with Russian intelligence, comparing the FBI under Kash Patel to the KGB and Chinese spy services, throwing around Nazi comparisons, and more.

Michael Feinberg, who was recently the assistant special agent in charge at the FBI’s Norfolk field office in Virginia, left the FBI at the end of May after he claims his direct superior told him that FBI deputy director Dan Bongino was scrutinizing his longtime friendship with Strzok, the disgraced FBI special agent who played a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation and was fired following the emergence of biased anti-Trump texts he had exchanged with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair.

Rather than take a polygraph test about his relationship with Strzok, Feinberg says he quit the FBI instead of risking the possible demotion he says he was facing in place of the big promotion to FBI headquarters which he had been expecting.

The FBI’s website says that “although we have used polygraphs to screen new employees for many years, since the 2001 Robert Hanssen spy case, we have also been requiring regular polygraph examinations of FBI employees with access to sensitive compartmented information.”

Anti-Trump operatives' new hero

Since leaving the bureau, Feinberg has been hailed this summer by some as a possible “Resistance 2.0”-style hero by multiple anti-Trump foes. He has appeared on CNN and MSNBC, talked with Daily Show host and Trump critic Jon Stewart, got a job at the Brookings Institute-affiliated anti-Trump outlet Lawfare, and more, all while lashing out at the FBI under FBI Director Kash Patel.

Feinberg has hinted at a nefarious connection between Trump and Russia, has compared the current bureau to Communist-style spy agencies, and has suggested that the Trump administration had commonalities with the Nazi regime, all while promoting the views of his friend Peter Strzok and seeking to downplay the FBI’s wrongdoing during its politically-motivated Crossfire Hurricane inquiry into now debunked claims of Trump-Russia collusion.

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News. Feinberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to him through his LinkedIn page.

Feinberg pushing baseless Trump-Russia claims in the face of truth

Despite a wave of declassification of documents led by Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard shedding further light on the politicized nature of the Trump-Russia investigation, Feinberg continues to insist that Trump is connected to Russian intelligence or has some sort of illicit relationship with the Kremlin.

Feinberg suggested without any evidence that Trump had been in communication with Russian spies during the 2016 election when the former FBI agent appeared on The Weekly Show podcast with Jon Stewart in August. Feinberg first appeared to suggest that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had done things worthy of FBI investigation in 2016, then quickly stressed that he believed Trump’s alleged wrongdoing related to Russia was much worse.

“We talked earlier in the podcast about the situation the FBI found itself in with both Clinton and Trump investigations and how that caused the FBI to lose the American people’s trust,” Feinberg said as he critiqued both Clinton and Trump, then said that “we were confronted in that election with two people who thought the rules didn’t apply to them.”

Feinberg then immediately sought to downplay Clinton’s wrongdoing as compared to what he claimed Trump had done, saying, “Now I think that — Clinton maintaining an email server that is beyond the reach of FOIA is different, yeah.” Stewart interjected and brought up January 6, saying, “Yeah it’s a slightly different order. It’s different than, like, getting people to storm the Capitol in order to prevent, you know, votes from being certified.” Feinberg then continued and falsely implied that Trump had colluded with Kremlin spies, adding, “Exactly, or talking to a foreign intelligence service.”

The former FBI agent’s social media activity also gave a window into Feinberg’s apparent belief that Trump had or still has some surreptitious relationship with Russia.

Feinberg reposted a July post on Bluesky from a left-wing University of Toronto professor, Timothy Snyder, who had suggested that Trump was somehow an agent or asset of Russia, with the post claiming that “the sad and fundamental truth is that neither the Obama administration nor the Clinton campaign took Russian electoral interference seriously, meaning that now, a decade on, Russia’s man keeps trying to prove that he’s not.”

Feinberg resigns rather than take polygraph on Strzok friendship

Feinberg has made it clear that he resigned from the FBI rather than have to face the polygraph test about his friendship with Peter Strzok — a truth-seeking threat he said had been relayed to him by his boss from Bongino.

The now-former FBI agent wrote a lengthy article for a leftwing and anti-Trump outlet, Lawfare, describing his side of the story about why he resigned from the FBI.

He said he received a series of phone calls on May 31 from his immediate boss at the time — Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office, Dominique Evans — who he said “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.” Feinberg claimed in his article that “my only supposed sin was a long-standing friendship with an individual who appeared on Kash Patel’s enemies list, and against whom Dan Bongino had railed publicly.”

Patel’s 2023 book, Government Gangsters, included a list of dozens of “members of the deep state” — and Strzok was listed among them. Patel noted that Strzok was “the man who formally opened up the Russia collusion investigation” and said that Strzok’s texts in 2016 showed that Strzok was “prepared to do anything” to stop Trump from becoming president.

During his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in late January, Patel said that “there is a glossary in the back” of his book, but denied that it was a list of his enemies.

“With all due respect, it's not an enemies list, that is a total mischaracterization,” Patel testified. He also denied that he would engage in retribution as FBI director, saying, “I have no plans in going backwards. … No one that did not break the law will be investigated.”

Feinberg said that he and Strzok “worked together in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division roughly a decade ago, and we shared a number of mutual acquaintances before we ever even met (the counterintelligence world being not that large)” and that “our own friendship began with a discovery that we liked the same bands and shared an interest in trying new restaurants.” Feinberg said that he and Strzok tried food and attended concerts together.

The now-former FBI agent said that Evans “informed me in a moment she described as ‘brutally honest’ that I would not be receiving any promotions; in fact, I needed to prepare myself for the likelihood of being demoted.” Feinberg said he was also told that “I would be asked to submit to a polygraph exam probing the nature of my friendship with Pete, and (as I was quietly informed by another, friendlier senior employee) what could only be described as a latter-day struggle session.” 

Feinberg said that when his boss “revealed the concern about my friendship with Pete, and its imminent consequences, I knew that I could no longer stay at the Bureau. Within twenty-four hours of my final phone call with her, I resigned, five years short of eligibility for retirement and a pension.”

Feinberg's resignation from FBI

Feinberg also shared his purported resignation letter from July 1, where he had told his boss, “I am writing to tender my resignation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, effective immediately. … I was informed by you that, because I maintain a friendship with a former FBI executive who is a critic and perceived enemy of the current administration, I will not be receiving any of the promotions for which I am currently being considered, and that I should actually steel myself to be demoted from my present role; additionally, I was informed that I should expect to be polygraphed about the nature of my friendship.”

The resignation letter included multiple critiques of FBI policy, including his claim that “we shirked our national security obligations in order to move personnel to immigration task forces.”

Feinberg made it clear during an interview on a Lawfare podcast in July that no one at the bureau had threatened to fire him, claiming he had been told that “you should prepare to actually be demoted, and you're probably going to be called up to D.C. for a polygraph or series of polygraphs about the nature of your relationship with Pete” and that, if he had stayed, he may have been transferred to an FBI office in Huntsville, Alabama, or perhaps “they would create some made up job somewhere else where I would just be bored to death until I voluntarily left.”

The former FBI agent told a Lawfare podcast in July that he was on a “glide path” to a good job at FBI HQ, and said some people in bureau headquarters had sought him out to apply for positions directly under them. Feinberg similarly told Jon Stewart in August that “I was sort of on a glide path to a senior executive position.” Feinberg repeatedly claimed that he had been on a “glide path” to a Senior Executive Service job at FBI headquarters prior to the call about his relationship with Strzok.

Jon Stewart claimed during the August podcast episode that Feinberg “was just let go because he was friends with someone the Trump administration didn’t like.” A group called "Steady State" made up of former national security officials, including a number of Hunter Biden laptop letter signers — mentioned Feinberg in an August letter where they similarly claimed that Feinberg was among “the recent removals of seasoned FBI leaders.”

Stewart and Steady State's allegations don't bear out. Feinberg was not "removed" from the bureau — he resigned from the FBI after allegedly being told he would be polygraphed about his relationship with Strzok.

Feinberg told the SpyTalk podcast in July that if he had been under scrutiny for a friendship with a foreign national or a member of the media, then “I could understand questions about whether those relationships were proper … but this was an entirely social relationship with somebody who, in fact, was a former very high senior executive in the organization.”

The former FBI agent added that “I think the closest thing to any sort of FBI discussion that he and I had over the past six months was we both made slightly disparaging comments in a personal venue about the fact that Kash Patel had decided to wear a badge. Beyond that, you know, we had a lot of discussions about the French dining scene in New York and bands that broke up in the 80s.”

Feinberg continues to defend Crossfire Hurricane

Feinberg has defended the deeply flawed Trump-Russia investigation launched by the FBI during Strzok’s time there, code named Crossfire Hurricane. He defended the investigation against the very mild criticism that the bureau’s actions didn’t look great in retrospect during a SpyTalk podcast episode in July, hosted by Michael Isikoff and Jeff Stein.  

Specifically, he claimed that it was not a fact that since-fired FBI Director James Comey had pushed to include British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier in the 2016 intelligence community assessment on Russian meddling.

Isikoff commented that “the FBI’s performance does not look so good in retrospect” vis-à-vis the Trump-Russia investigation. Feinberg immediately interrupted podcast co-host Isikoff to disagree.

“I would push back against that, actually,” Feinberg said. “If you look at the ultimate results of the various Russia investigations, starting with the universe of Crossfire Hurricane cases, going up through the conclusion of the special counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller and the publication of its report, you have a lot of things in the public record that make it very clear that there were seriously worrisome connections between members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and that the Russians were engaged in a massive social media disinformation campaign.”

During the podcast interview with Feinberg last month, Isikoff insisted, “The FBI did screw up. The Carter Page FISA was an entirely botched effort that relied on the unverified Steele Dossier. We’ve learned that Comey was pushing the Steele Dossier into — trying to get it into the intelligence assessment.”

Feinberg swears by the Steele Dossier

Feinberg then interrupted again, “No, no, no. We have not learned that definitively. We have a report issued by a current director of the CIA who was viewed as too partisan to be appointed as the director of national intelligence by his own party the first time he was nominated. So I would caution people to take anything coming from John Ratcliffe or Tulsi Gabbard alleging any sort of improper behavior.”

It has been public knowledge for years that Comey wanted the Steele Dossier included in the 2016 intelligence community assessment. The more recent declassifications by Ratcliffe and Gabbard show that, in addition to Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan also pushed to include the dossier in the ICA — and that the dossier was indeed referenced in a key part of the body of the most highly-classified version of the ICA.

Inspector General Horowitz’s 2019 report made it clear that “the FBI, including Comey and [since-fired FBI deputy director Andrew] McCabe, sought to include the reporting in the ICA.” Comey wrote a December 2016 email where he said that “we thought it important to bring it [the dossier] forward to the IC effort.” McCabe wrote a December 2016 email where he said that “there are a number of reasons why I feel strongly that it needs to appear in some fashion in the main body of the reporting.”

During the podcast interview, Isikoff added that “we now know that the Steele Dossier was essentially worthless.”

Feinberg again pushed back, arguing that “the notion that there was some sort of massive conspiracy involving the FBI to undermine the foundations of democracy or abuse its power on behalf of a political party is quite frankly ludicrous and unsupported by the evidence” and accused Isikoff of “picking at straws in individual events to defame an organization.”

Feinberg also told Jon Stewart in August that most people who get into law enforcement and join the FBI “root for Javert in Les Misérables.” He also argued that “there never was a Deep State.”

Feinberg touts Peter Strzok’s book and podcast appearances

Feinberg has also repeatedly promoted commentary by Strzok about Crossfire Hurricane and the FBI.

The former FBI agent’s resignation letter earlier this year included a line where the former FBI agent promoted Strzok’s anti-Trump 2020 book, "Compromised." Feinberg wrote that “I’m not going to rehash or relitigate Pete’s story here; it’s been told ably and comprehensively by others, not the least by himself” as he linked to a promotion of Strzok’s memoir.

The Kirkus Reviews book review of Strzok’s book included a quote from Strzok, who had claimed that “if the American people had known what we did [about Trump and Russia] at the time of the election, they would have been appalled.” The book review claimed that Strzok was “one of many FBI executives fired for bringing his inquiries too close to the Oval Office” and said that “the attention devoted to scrutinizing Clinton’s email, Strzok suggests, may well have kept the agency from spotting signs of Russian interference until it was too late.” 

The book review shared by Feinberg called Strzok’s book “an important addition to the ever-expanding library of Trumpian crimes.”

Feinberg promoted a podcast appearance by Strzok on Bluesky in July, saying that “even I — who spent the better part of two decades in the Bureau, and personally knows the guest — found this incredibly insightful.”

The podcast was by David Frum of The Atlantic, with the episode titled “The Wrecking of the FBI” with Frum claiming that Strzok was “an FBI agent who has become a victim of President Trump’s campaign of retribution against those who try to apply law against him.”

The go-to dismissal: "conspiracy theories"

Feinberg tried to downplay the significance of Strzok’s biased and anti-Trump texts during a Lawfare podcast episode in July, claiming that the revelation of Strzok’s texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page “sort of spawned a lot of conspiracy theories and slanders against the bureau in the multimedia universe that Dan Bongino previously operated.”

Michael Isikoff said on the SpyTalk podcast episode in July that Strzok “got into trouble because he was the lead agent, at least initially, on Crossfire Hurricane.” Feinberg argued back that “I would gently push back against that characterization. An investigation like that is always — it’s a large team of individuals at all levels… and at that time Pete was one of the senior executives overseeing the case.”

In fact, Strzok was so central to Crossfire Hurricane that he wrote the memo which launched the investigation and says he personally came up with its name based on the lyrics from a Rolling Stones song — a song Feinberg was well aware of.

“As I sat at my desk staring at the insistently blinking cursor, I racked my brain for a good codename,” Strzok wrote in Compromised about the launch of the Russiagate inquiry. “The words of the Rolling Stones song ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ ran through my mind, Mick Jagger’s swaggering ‘I was born in a crossfire hurricane / And I howled at the morning driving rain.’ Then I typed in the codename that would follow the case forever: Crossfire Hurricane. I didn’t appreciate how prescient that title would be.”

Feinberg had told Jon Stewart in August that, when deciding to resign from the bureau, “as heartbreaking as it was, to quote the Stones, I decided to walk before they made me run, and resigned.”

Feinberg compares FBI under Patel to Mao, KGB, and Nazis

Feinberg has compared the FBI under Patel to Communist China under Mao Zedong, to Soviet spy services, and even to Nazi Germany.

He wrote in Lawfare in July that what was occurring in the FBI under Kash Patel was somehow similar to the Cultural Revolution in Communist China, where purges and violence unleashed by Chairman Mao Zedong resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands — and perhaps well north of a million — Chinese citizens.

“I would be expected to grovel, beg forgiveness, and pledge loyalty as part of the FBI’s cultural revolution brought about by Patel and Bongino’s accession to the highest echelons of American law enforcement and intelligence,” the former FBI official wrote.

Feinberg similarly told the SpyTalk podcast in July that the FBI under Patel was similar to the Soviet Union’s People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs or its Committee for State Security — commonly known as the NKVD and the KGB, respectively — and to the CCP’s Ministry of State Security. These Communist spy agencies served regimes which killed millions of people.

Isikoff asked what Feinberg made of how the FBI was being run by Patel and Bongino.

“What the FBI reminds me of now, as somebody who has worked in counterintelligence for his whole career, is honestly what the KGB or its forerunner, the NKVD would have looked like after one of the Politburo’s ideological purges during the Cold War, or what China’s MSS would have looked like after one of the pretextual corruption hunts that have gone on in that country over the past decade or so,” Feinberg contended.

Jeff Stein asked if he was saying this was a “Communist-style purge on political grounds.” Feinberg replied that “I don’t know how you could look at 20th century history and compare it to anything else.”

Feinberg has even repeatedly evoked Nazis and the Holocaust when discussing the FBI under Patel and actions taken by the Trump administration writ-large. Feinberg  appeared to compare a July agreement reached between Columbia University and the Trump administration to something that would occur in Nazi Germany, referencing Martin Heidegger — a German philosopher and member of the Nazi Party — and posting on Bluesky that “Heidegger would be ever so proud.”

The former FBI agent also lamented the FBI working with ICE to combat illegal immigration, saying it could be part of the path to a “police state” when he spoke with Jon Stewart in August. The former FBI agent made it clear that he wanted to compare the current FBI to the Nazis, saying he didn’t want to violate Godwin’s law — a decades-old internet maxim which holds that, the longer an online debate continues, the more likely it is that someone will get compared to Adolf Hitler or his Nazi Party.

“It’s insane. … Now that you’re unifying into these weird homeland security task-forces where everybody is involved in immigration and violent gangs — the ones being chosen to prosecute, I’m sure coincidentally all come from South America — this sort of centralization of law enforcement authority and operations is something that we’ve seen — I’m not going to violate Godwin’s law here,” Feinberg said.

Feinberg: "I'm just saying"

Stewart urged Feinberg not to make a Nazi comparison, saying, “Please don’t. Please don’t go there.”

Feinberg replied, “I’m just saying that there are eras in history where this has happened and countries where this has happened and they are generally things we don’t want to emulate.”

Stewart asked Feinberg if the United States could find its way out of the terrible situation which the former FBI agent was alleging the country was in because of Trump, and Feinberg suggested that the U.S. might need its own “truth and reconciliation commission” akin to the one established in post-apartheid South Africa.

“Yes, absolutely. Look, Japan and Germany are vibrant, functioning democracies. South Africa post-apartheid had the truth and reconciliation commission,” Feinberg said, adding, "Absent some sort of national reconciliation process where we really do this sort of internal searching about how a lot of this consolidation of power and destruction of norms happened, I don’t know how we come back.”

Feinberg also said it was an “open question” about whether “democracy is going to collapse.”

"Resistance 2.0" embraces Feinberg

Feinberg has been widely embraced by an array of anti-Trump figures who played a role in the “Resistance” against Trump during the president’s first term.

Benjamin Wittes — described by Politico in 2017 as “The Bard of the Deep State” — is a longtime Trump critic, a self-described friend of Comey and Strzok, and the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, where Feinberg wrote his first article describing his resignation from the FBI. Feinberg will reportedly soon be working for Lawfare.

New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt wrote multiple stories in May 2017 about Comey’s interactions with Trump — including the contents of the so-called Comey Memos, which described Wittes as “a friend of Mr. Comey’s” with Wittes writing that he gave a long interview to Schmidt “about my conversations with FBI Director James Comey over the last few months, and particularly about one such conversation that took place on March 27 over lunch in Comey’s FBI office.”

During Trump’s first term, Wittes would celebrate Russiagate stories by posting on social media videos of a “Baby Cannon” firing. Wittes and Feinberg also say they are friends, and Wittes and Feinberg announced that Feinberg would be working at Lawfare soon after his resignation in late May of this year.

Feinberg wrote on Bluesky in June that Lawfare “has been producing incredibly important scholarship and commentary on national security and rule of law issues for fifteen years now” — indicating he had been a big fan of the anti-Trump outlet during the first Trump administration and beyond. He also wrote on LinkedIn that “for the entirety of my career serving our country and the Constitution, I knew that I could count on The Lawfare Institute to provide the most incisive and insightful commentary on the national security issues of the day. I am beyond excited to join its team.”

Feinberg is now listed as a Lawfare contributor and has appeared on at least one more Lawfare podcast episodes with Wittes on the “Trials of the Trump Administration”, including one in early August on “the politicization of the Justice Department” and “the Justice Department’s misconduct complaint against Judge Boasberg.”

Wittes referenced his “tiny cannon” bit from the first Trump administration when welcoming Feinberg to Lawfare during a July podcast appearance.

Welcome to the "Other Side“

"Boom, you're a great American. Welcome to the other side. There's lots of public service to do on this side,” Wittes said. “For those who do not know this already, Mike will be joining Lawfare in September as our next public service fellow. You will be hearing from him a lot. He's got a lot to say about the bureau, about the rule of law, about the Chinese Communist Party and its efforts against the United States, and again, about a whole lot of other stuff too. Mike, we'll be hearing a lot more from you. Welcome to the Lawfare clubhouse.”

Feinberg also announced on LinkedIn in July that he was joining Justice Connection, a group which describes itself as “a network of DOJ alumni working to protect our former colleagues who are under attack.” Feinberg wrote that “the organization was a great help to me when I left the FBI earlier than I ever expected I would, and I’m looking forward to being able to assist those in a similar position.”

Justice Connection tweeted in July that “we’re grateful Mike Feinberg has joined Justice Connection, part of what he calls ‘the exile community,’ to defend FBI agents from Kash Patel's dangerous purge of the bureau's apolitical workforce.”

The Steady State — a group of former national security officials who include a number of Hunter Biden laptop letter signers — also embraced Feinberg, writing a letter which decried what they wrongly described as his removal and encouraging their followers to embrace Feinberg. The group, which says it has been resisting Trump since 2016, listed Feinberg as among those named in “a starter pack of individuals with expertise in national security who support the rule-of-law, civil liberties, and constitutional democracy.”

Listed members of the Steady State include Hunter Biden laptop letter signers Larry Pfeiffer and John Sipher, Biden State Department spokesman Ned Price, Christopher Steele’s friend and former State Department official Jonathan Winer and so-called "anti-disinformation" business Newsguard's General (Ret.) Michael Hayden.

Miles Taylor — the former DHS official from the first Trump administration who went by “Anonymous” when writing the 2018 New York Times piece which declared that “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” — has also repeatedly praised Feinberg.

“Trump is using citizenship threats as leverage against his enemies. What we’ve seen happen to Michael and the polygraphing and intimidation of FBI agents, what we’ve seen with revenge investigations ordered against me and others, does indeed show us I think that we are veering toward something that I used to think was hyperbole, veering toward something that could accurately be characterized as a police state … That should be a five alarm fire for democracy, and I have to say that it’s only because of people like Michael Feinberg standing up that we have a shot to push back on this,” Taylor said in an appearance with Feinberg on MSNBC.

Taylor tweeted in July that “Michael Feinberg is what courage looks like.” He also wrote in his Treason Substack in July that Feinberg was “the type of person who could save America.”

Feinberg claims he is a “conservative” critic of Trump and Patel's FBI

The former FBI agent also argued that he was “conservative” — before heaping disdain on the conservative movement.

Quinta Jurecic, a harsh anti-Trump critic who has written for The Atlantic since 2018, was also a senior editor at Lawfare, according to her biography. Jurecic said on Bluesky that “this is a great program that @lawfaremedia.org is running for public servants leaving govt [government]. mike is a profoundly principled person and a real mensch, and I'm thrilled to have him on board.”

Jurecic also wrote a piece for the Atlantic saying that when she and Feinberg “first met, sometime around the beginning of the first Trump administration, Feinberg was working on counterintelligence investigations against China.” Jurecic claimed that Feinberg “didn’t talk about the details of his job much, but we turned out to share an interest in film noir and indie rock.” 

The writer said that “I came to consider him a friend” and revealed that Feinberg had told her about his political views when he was still an FBI agent during Trump’s first term, writing, “At that point, he was already struggling to understand a conservative movement that seemed to have abandoned many of the principles that had attracted him in the first place.”

Feinberg said on a Lawfare podcast in July that “I've never been a particularly political or ideological person, but to the extent that I have ever been a member of an organization that has political leanings, those organizations have been invariably conservative.” Feinberg said he was a member of the Federalist Society at Northwestern University and was a summer clerk at the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice.

The former FBI agent told Jon Stewart in August that “I am a conservative… but the unitary executive theory, that’s pretty far afield from what any of the Founders intended the president to be.” Feinberg added: “I would humbly suggest if your devotion to the Constitution is largely manifested through a ‘We the People’ tattoo and an affinity for the Gadsden flag, your understanding of federalist principles is probably not as deep as you think it is.”

Feinberg has also suggested that he is giving advice to others inside the Justice Department and the bureau who may want to resist the Trump administration.

The ex-FBI agent told Stewart that “I’m getting contacted over Signal or LinkedIn… by complete strangers from both DOJ and the FBI who are looking to me now for guidance as to how they should handle very anomalous situations with ambiguous authorities in which they are being told to do things they are not entirely comfortable with.” He also noted that, for those inside the FBI, “there’s ways to put sand in the gears if you’re really uncomfortable doing something.”