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This story was updated at 6 p.m. on October 9, 2026.

Russia is a U.S. adversary, with a track record of interfering in U.S. elections. It’s providing support for Iran in its war with the United States even as the U.S. backs Ukraine in its long-running war against Russia. FBI agents work day and night to combat a long list of threats emanating from Russian soil: espionage, cyber intrusions, influence campaigns, and efforts to infiltrate American institutions and critical infrastructure. So when the news emerged this summer that FBI Director Kash Patel would be visiting Moscow just three weeks before the midterm elections, many of his own employees were puzzled—and concerned.

Current and former FBI officials familiar with the matter told me there was a quiet campaign to urge senior leadership to cancel the trip. When that and other efforts to pass apprehensions up the chain went unanswered, some shared their worries with Congress. Now a pair of senior House Democrats are taking the unusual step of asking the FBI director to scrap the visit, which is reportedly set to begin next week: “In the interest of national security, we ask you to reconsider. Call off this trip,” they wrote in a letter that I obtained. The letter is signed by Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Representative Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Patel has not replied to the letter and the FBI has not publicly confirmed his travel plans. Neither the FBI nor the White House responded to my multiple requests for comment.

With so little information available either publicly or internally, the anxiety within the agency Patel leads has only grown. Seventeen current and former FBI and Department of Justice officials, intelligence officials, and others familiar with the situation told me they were deeply worried by a variety of decisions that suggest ever-closer ties between the Trump administration and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Many of the officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation if their name appeared in this story. Patel has filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic and me in response to my reporting earlier this year that he has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences that were perceived as potential national-security vulnerabilities.

But some former officials were willing to be named. They told me that for the national-security and counterintelligence officials who have devoted their careers to the threat from Russia, the absence of information about the trip is particularly concerning. Christopher O’Leary, a former senior executive in the FBI’s counterterrorism division, told me that he and others found the timing of the trip bizarre, especially given the pressure that FBI leadership is putting on agents to substantiate election conspiracy theories at home that Russian intelligence services continuously amplify. “If there was real concern about interference in our elections, then the FBI director should be in the United States leading the effort around the clock,” not going to Moscow, O’Leary told me.

When Patel took over leadership of the bureau in February of last year, he struck a notably different tone on Russia than that of his predecessors. Rather than regarding Moscow purely as an enemy, he has sought out areas where the two nations can partner, including in combatting transnational violent crime and cyberfraud. He shares that approach with other senior officials in the Trump administration who have cultivated closer ties with Moscow.

In recent days, two of the president’s top advisers, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, found time amid the midterm campaigns to visit Republika Srpska to advise its pro-Russian government on voting issues, The New York Times reported. A top Trump-administration diplomat has come up with a plan to trade sanctions relief in exchange for Russian political-prisoner releases—a deal that would bypass Ukraine and likely anger U.S. allies. Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have both spent considerable time with Putin as they seek a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine. Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, accepted a lavish wedding gift from the Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rental of a private island and a fireworks show, ProPublica has reported. (Kremlev said this week that Trump Jr. has paid him back.) Earlier this year, a gold-framed photo of Trump with Putin went up in the Palm Room at the White House. Just today, Trump announced that he and Putin had worked out a deal for the U.S. to import Russian diesel fuel, an agreement that directly undercuts American sanctions.

[Read: Is there anything Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?]

In interviews with Reuters in August, Patel boasted about the FBI’s new approach to its “non-traditional partners,” Russia and China. Patel described extensive behind-the-scenes cooperation with Russian authorities to target violent criminal networks. “This stuff doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “We’ve been at this for 15 months.” Both Reuters and Politico reported this summer that Patel was planning a trip to Russia this month. Politico cited a U.S. official familiar with the plans in reporting that Patel would visit Moscow first, then St. Petersburg, with the host likely to be the FSB, the Russian security service that is the successor to the KGB.

While speaking with Reuters, Patel characterized the FBI’s relationships with Russian and Chinese law enforcement as “new and dynamic,” but he was careful to add that engagement did not negate the need for vigilance. “We are extremely mindful of their adversarial approach on many matters,” he said. “They are not going to stop, but if we can go and have wins for America, then we must engage.”

In congressional testimony, Patel has identified Russia as among the FBI’s biggest nation-state threats. Last month, he said “the counter-espionage arrests by this FBI are up 53 percent, including from Russia.” Three weeks ago, Patel took part in the announcement of charges against five people whom the FBI investigated for their part in what he described as “an alleged plot by the Russian intelligence services to murder a dissident on U.S. soil for daring to speak out against the Russian government.” Patel said the plot “exposes the lengths to which our adversaries will go to silence its critics,” adding that the FBI “is committed to defending the free speech of everyone within our homeland and will not tolerate any attempts by foreign governments to violate our laws and threaten our freedoms.”

Patel has spent years echoing Trump’s claims that Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election was a “hoax.” That’s also what Russia claims, but that runs against the conclusions of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities, including the bureau Patel now directs. Trump gave a prime-time address this summer on the threats that foreign adversaries pose to U.S. elections—though he focused almost exclusively on China, and made little mention of threats from Russia.

FBI directors have visited Russia before, most recently Robert Mueller in 2013, to discuss the Boston Marathon bombings and related investigations. But previous visits by FBI officials to Russia have come with greater internal transparency about the purpose and planning of the trip, four current and former FBI officials told me.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did the Russian embassy in Washington. In July, Peskov told Russian reporters, “I do not have any information on the matter. You know, such visits are not usually made public, so I cannot tell you anything about this,” according to the Russian state news agency TASS.

Two former senior FBI officials who oversaw Russian counterintelligence operations and were familiar with previous FBI directors’ contact with their Russian counterparts told me they could not think of a compelling reason for Patel to take the trip at this moment that outweighed the practical risks.

[Read: The FBI director is MIA]  

The letter this week from congressional Democrats asks Patel for clarity. “Why is the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) visiting a hostile foreign power that has been committing war crimes, conducting influence operations against U.S. elections, conducting malicious cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure, and helping our adversaries target and kill American soldiers?” the letter asks.

“As Director of the FBI, you possess information that would be highly valuable to America’s adversaries. Unfortunately, your affinity for the Russian government does not inspire confidence that you will be able to effectively safeguard those secrets,” the letter continues.

The two congressmen requested a closed-door briefing to Congress about the trip and Patel’s efforts to forge ties with adversaries no later than 5 p.m. on October 12. They are asking for details about what prompted the trip, as well as the itinerary and planned meetings while Patel is in Russia. And they are asking for details about any social activities, “a full accounting” of Patel’s whereabouts during any downtime, and the names of all individuals who will accompany Patel, notably including “any private citizens or members of President Trump’s family.”

Multiple foreign officials who would normally be consulted have said they, too, were in the dark about Patel’s trip. A senior Ukrainian official said they had not been briefed or consulted about the trip, and had “no idea” why Patel was planning the visit. One senior European official said that in conversations with their American diplomatic and intelligence counterparts, the American officials had expressed concern about Patel’s trip.

Raskin told me that members of Congress were also confused about the purpose of such a trip. “The whole thing to me is absolutely astounding,” he said. “He will be a target and sitting duck for every kind of Russian espionage and influence operation. We are demanding they call it off. This could be a disaster for our country.” Three former FBI counterintelligence officials told me they shared those concerns. “There isn’t a single American official who doesn’t get targeted” by the Russian intelligence services while they are in the country, one person familiar with the situation told me.

Some of the tools that the U.S. once had to combat foreign meddling have eroded. The FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force was disbanded almost immediately after the new administration came to power in 2025, and dozens of its specialized staff were either reassigned or removed from the bureau, Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst and White House National Security Council director under the second Trump administration, told me. And NPR reported this week that the teams that track foreign spies on U.S. soil—known as counterintelligence squads—have only about half of their positions filled.

[Read: Trump still hasn’t found what he’s looking for]

Curlee told me that it’s possible to imagine a legitimate reason for the FBI director to visit Russia—but that she doubts that’s why Patel is going now. “Unless he’s going to warn them to stay out of our elections, and get out of Ukraine, he has no business there,” she said.

Officials told me that they were confident that FBI staff would do everything in their power to mitigate the counterintelligence risks if Patel travels to Russia, but that they cannot prevent him from going. “Who can stop him?” one former FBI official asked.

Simon Shuster contributed reporting.

Sign up for Inside the Trump Presidency, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump term.

This story was updated at 6 p.m. on October 9, 2026.

Russia is a U.S. adversary, with a track record of interfering in U.S. elections. It’s providing support for Iran in its war with the United States even as the U.S. backs Ukraine in its long-running war against Russia. FBI agents work day and night to combat a long list of threats emanating from Russian soil: espionage, cyber intrusions, influence campaigns, and efforts to infiltrate American institutions and critical infrastructure. So when the news emerged this summer that FBI Director Kash Patel would be visiting Moscow just three weeks before the midterm elections, many of his own employees were puzzled—and concerned.

Current and former FBI officials familiar with the matter told me there was a quiet campaign to urge senior leadership to cancel the trip. When that and other efforts to pass apprehensions up the chain went unanswered, some shared their worries with Congress. Now a pair of senior House Democrats are taking the unusual step of asking the FBI director to scrap the visit, which is reportedly set to begin next week: “In the interest of national security, we ask you to reconsider. Call off this trip,” they wrote in a letter that I obtained. The letter is signed by Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Representative Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Patel has not replied to the letter and the FBI has not publicly confirmed his travel plans. Neither the FBI nor the White House responded to my multiple requests for comment.

With so little information available either publicly or internally, the anxiety within the agency Patel leads has only grown. Seventeen current and former FBI and Department of Justice officials, intelligence officials, and others familiar with the situation told me they were deeply worried by a variety of decisions that suggest ever-closer ties between the Trump administration and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Many of the officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation if their name appeared in this story. Patel has filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic and me in response to my reporting earlier this year that he has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences that were perceived as potential national-security vulnerabilities.

But some former officials were willing to be named. They told me that for the national-security and counterintelligence officials who have devoted their careers to the threat from Russia, the absence of information about the trip is particularly concerning. Christopher O’Leary, a former senior executive in the FBI’s counterterrorism division, told me that he and others found the timing of the trip bizarre, especially given the pressure that FBI leadership is putting on agents to substantiate election conspiracy theories at home that Russian intelligence services continuously amplify. “If there was real concern about interference in our elections, then the FBI director should be in the United States leading the effort around the clock,” not going to Moscow, O’Leary told me.

When Patel took over leadership of the bureau in February of last year, he struck a notably different tone on Russia than that of his predecessors. Rather than regarding Moscow purely as an enemy, he has sought out areas where the two nations can partner, including in combatting transnational violent crime and cyberfraud. He shares that approach with other senior officials in the Trump administration who have cultivated closer ties with Moscow.

In recent days, two of the president’s top advisers, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, found time amid the midterm campaigns to visit Republika Srpska to advise its pro-Russian government on voting issues, The New York Times reported. A top Trump-administration diplomat has come up with a plan to trade sanctions relief in exchange for Russian political-prisoner releases—a deal that would bypass Ukraine and likely anger U.S. allies. Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have both spent considerable time with Putin as they seek a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine. Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, accepted a lavish wedding gift from the Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the rental of a private island and a fireworks show, ProPublica has reported. (Kremlev said this week that Trump Jr. has paid him back.) Earlier this year, a gold-framed photo of Trump with Putin went up in the Palm Room at the White House. Just today, Trump announced that he and Putin had worked out a deal for the U.S. to import Russian diesel fuel, an agreement that directly undercuts American sanctions.

[Read: Is there anything Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?]

In interviews with Reuters in August, Patel boasted about the FBI’s new approach to its “non-traditional partners,” Russia and China. Patel described extensive behind-the-scenes cooperation with Russian authorities to target violent criminal networks. “This stuff doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “We’ve been at this for 15 months.” Both Reuters and Politico reported this summer that Patel was planning a trip to Russia this month. Politico cited a U.S. official familiar with the plans in reporting that Patel would visit Moscow first, then St. Petersburg, with the host likely to be the FSB, the Russian security service that is the successor to the KGB.

While speaking with Reuters, Patel characterized the FBI’s relationships with Russian and Chinese law enforcement as “new and dynamic,” but he was careful to add that engagement did not negate the need for vigilance. “We are extremely mindful of their adversarial approach on many matters,” he said. “They are not going to stop, but if we can go and have wins for America, then we must engage.”

In congressional testimony, Patel has identified Russia as among the FBI’s biggest nation-state threats. Last month, he said “the counter-espionage arrests by this FBI are up 53 percent, including from Russia.” Three weeks ago, Patel took part in the announcement of charges against five people whom the FBI investigated for their part in what he described as “an alleged plot by the Russian intelligence services to murder a dissident on U.S. soil for daring to speak out against the Russian government.” Patel said the plot “exposes the lengths to which our adversaries will go to silence its critics,” adding that the FBI “is committed to defending the free speech of everyone within our homeland and will not tolerate any attempts by foreign governments to violate our laws and threaten our freedoms.”

Patel has spent years echoing Trump’s claims that Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election was a “hoax.” That’s also what Russia claims, but that runs against the conclusions of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities, including the bureau Patel now directs. Trump gave a prime-time address this summer on the threats that foreign adversaries pose to U.S. elections—though he focused almost exclusively on China, and made little mention of threats from Russia.

FBI directors have visited Russia before, most recently Robert Mueller in 2013, to discuss the Boston Marathon bombings and related investigations. But previous visits by FBI officials to Russia have come with greater internal transparency about the purpose and planning of the trip, four current and former FBI officials told me.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did the Russian embassy in Washington. In July, Peskov told Russian reporters, “I do not have any information on the matter. You know, such visits are not usually made public, so I cannot tell you anything about this,” according to the Russian state news agency TASS.

Two former senior FBI officials who oversaw Russian counterintelligence operations and were familiar with previous FBI directors’ contact with their Russian counterparts told me they could not think of a compelling reason for Patel to take the trip at this moment that outweighed the practical risks.

[Read: The FBI director is MIA]  

The letter this week from congressional Democrats asks Patel for clarity. “Why is the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) visiting a hostile foreign power that has been committing war crimes, conducting influence operations against U.S. elections, conducting malicious cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure, and helping our adversaries target and kill American soldiers?” the letter asks.

“As Director of the FBI, you possess information that would be highly valuable to America’s adversaries. Unfortunately, your affinity for the Russian government does not inspire confidence that you will be able to effectively safeguard those secrets,” the letter continues.

The two congressmen requested a closed-door briefing to Congress about the trip and Patel’s efforts to forge ties with adversaries no later than 5 p.m. on October 12. They are asking for details about what prompted the trip, as well as the itinerary and planned meetings while Patel is in Russia. And they are asking for details about any social activities, “a full accounting” of Patel’s whereabouts during any downtime, and the names of all individuals who will accompany Patel, notably including “any private citizens or members of President Trump’s family.”

Multiple foreign officials who would normally be consulted have said they, too, were in the dark about Patel’s trip. A senior Ukrainian official said they had not been briefed or consulted about the trip, and had “no idea” why Patel was planning the visit. One senior European official said that in conversations with their American diplomatic and intelligence counterparts, the American officials had expressed concern about Patel’s trip.

Raskin told me that members of Congress were also confused about the purpose of such a trip. “The whole thing to me is absolutely astounding,” he said. “He will be a target and sitting duck for every kind of Russian espionage and influence operation. We are demanding they call it off. This could be a disaster for our country.” Three former FBI counterintelligence officials told me they shared those concerns. “There isn’t a single American official who doesn’t get targeted” by the Russian intelligence services while they are in the country, one person familiar with the situation told me.

Some of the tools that the U.S. once had to combat foreign meddling have eroded. The FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force was disbanded almost immediately after the new administration came to power in 2025, and dozens of its specialized staff were either reassigned or removed from the bureau, Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst and White House National Security Council director under the second Trump administration, told me. And NPR reported this week that the teams that track foreign spies on U.S. soil—known as counterintelligence squads—have only about half of their positions filled.

[Read: Trump still hasn’t found what he’s looking for]

Curlee told me that it’s possible to imagine a legitimate reason for the FBI director to visit Russia—but that she doubts that’s why Patel is going now. “Unless he’s going to warn them to stay out of our elections, and get out of Ukraine, he has no business there,” she said.

Officials told me that they were confident that FBI staff would do everything in their power to mitigate the counterintelligence risks if Patel travels to Russia, but that they cannot prevent him from going. “Who can stop him?” one former FBI official asked.

Simon Shuster contributed reporting.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.

Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed before God, Fox Nation, and Donald Trump that he would punish the “deep state” for its manifold transgressions, especially the (actually nonexistent) conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.

“I’ve been with the president nearly since day one on this,” he said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo. “I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need. We’re working with our prosecutors at the Department of Justice under Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrests, and it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon.”

That was five months ago. Patel has not yet delivered on his promise. But in interviews with more than 40 current and former administration officials, FBI employees, and members of Congress and their staffers, as well as others close to the White House, I’ve learned that it is not for lack of trying.

The people I spoke with described Patel as desperate to help the Justice Department indict putative malefactors and stimulate headlines to please the president. Nearly all of the people I spoke with would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation if their name appeared in the story. Patel has filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic and me in response to my reporting earlier this year that he has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

In recent months, Patel has been briefed on the FBI’s “election integrity” investigations in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, and beyond. Officials told me their understanding is that many of the election-related investigation requests came directly from the White House, many times with the instruction that “this is a big deal for the president” or “this is a push from 47.” But all of that attention hasn’t yielded results. In meetings, Patel has expressed frustration that there have been no new findings, and instructed staff to “look harder” or “look again,” according to three people familiar with the conversations.

The FBI’s preoccupation with the 2020 election represents a dramatic break with its past. Though the bureau—one of the world’s most famous and most powerful law-enforcement agencies—has experienced more than its share of controversies and episodes of overreach, it has also been dedicated to criminal investigation based in evidence, science, and reality. The commitment of personnel, resources, and time to investigate a conspiracy theory that was manufactured by Trump to explain his electoral defeat marks a decisive pivot away from its historical role.

Patel’s aggressive pursuit of the conspiracy investigation has helped him keep his job. Reports that Trump is keen to push him out have diminished. Patel’s predecessors had always sought to demonstrate their independence by creating operational and optical distance from the White House—especially when it came to the sanctity and neutrality of elections. Patel has taken a radically different course, attempting to translate Trump’s eternal election-related grievances into a core law-enforcement mission of the federal government. “Patel is the only guy who never says no,” a Republican operative close to the White House told me. “And the president likes that.”

[Read: Trump’s purge may be just beginning]

In response to a three-page memo I wrote outlining 17 detailed questions for him regarding the FBI’s pivot to election-conspiracy investigations, Patel responded in a most curious fashion. Instead of addressing my questions, he wrote: “I’m still looking for my gold-plated jet ski in the English Channel; you all know where it is. Free ride if you help me find it.”

I did not understand this response. I have never written about, or asked Patel or the FBI about, anything having to do with Jet Skis or the English Channel. A bit of Googling, however, uncovered the probable root of his reply. On July 10, MS NOW published a story concerning Patel’s political difficulties, some of which, the story said, related to his lifestyle. Included in the story was a graphic of, among other things, a white Jet Ski, a set of golf clubs, and a private jet. Patel responded to the MS NOW story on X, writing, “Nah, my jet ski is gold plated… dumbass.”  

Put simply, Patel responded to The Atlantic’s questions about the FBI’s election investigations by referring to a graphic that appeared on an unrelated news story on another media company’s website.

Other FBI officials, however, did respond to my questions. The FBI’s press office sent me statements from five other named officials—Chris Raia, Andrew Bailey, Chad Yarborough, Joe Perez, and Matt Fodor—who defended Patel, claimed my reporting was “false,” and insisted that the FBI was “united.” Many of the statements used almost-identical language and did not deny that the FBI was focused on the alleged election conspiracy. The FBI published my questions and its answers on X last night, before this story was published.

A spokesperson for the FBI said in a statement that “election security is and will continue to be one of this FBI’s highest national security priorities, and we will make no apologies for any work to ensure every American citizen’s sacred right to vote is protected from criminal interference.” The spokesperson said there has been a “500% increase in election integrity related investigations and arrests just this year alone” and denied that there had been any internal concerns raised about the bureau’s approach to election-related investigations.

But others I spoke with told me that Patel’s stance is redefining how the bureau prepares for an election. One striking example came last month when FBI and DOJ staff attended an “election integrity” training session. In the past, these trainings have focused on how to respond to the most common threats to poll workers or voting locations. Some attendees were alarmed that a focus of this year’s training was about voting by undocumented immigrants, a statistically rare phenomenon that has nevertheless preoccupied Trump and others on the right. There was little mention of the prohibition on armed federal law enforcement being stationed at the polls.

Agents across the country have been seeking counsel in recent weeks about how to respond to FBI directives related to the election, according to six current and former FBI and DOJ supervisors and outside defense attorneys who told me they have received calls. “Agents are nervous, talking among themselves,” said a former DOJ official who has received multiple requests for advice unlike anything this person has seen before. Another former senior FBI official told me he had received calls from dozens of his former colleagues looking for counsel and describing “a real effort to bend people to the narrative” of the president’s election-conspiracy theories. One agent told me he contemplates Election Day and thinks: “I’m either gonna be sick that day or they are going to have to fire me.” There is no question that people in the FBI are rattled. What is uncertain is the degree to which they should be.

On Monday, Andrew Bailey, one of the FBI’s co–deputy directors, unexpectedly announced that he was leaving the bureau, citing a desire to spend more time with his family. Bailey had overseen election-related investigations, and had supported Trump’s false fraud claims. But several employees I spoke with said he would frequently raise questions about proposed law-enforcement actions in meetings. “Bailey brings up the Constitution. He will say, ‘The law prevents you from doing that,’” one former FBI official told me. Now he is gone, leaving employees to wonder whether anyone left at a senior level will push back on Patel or the president. (In a statement, Bailey denied raising questions about proposed actions, saying, “This is absolutely false.”)

Another shake-up in recent days came when several attorneys left their assignments in the investigation into the alleged “grand conspiracy.” Two former DOJ officials told me the prosecutors quit because they had clashed with senior department leadership amid pressure to deliver indictments before the midterm elections. Among those exiting are “true believers” who were committed to the president’s goals, as one law-enforcement official described it to me.

For more than a century, FBI agents have sworn an oath to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. That mission becomes complicated when a president is so intensely focused on the outcome of FBI investigations. One former senior FBI official told me that Patel has told his staff that he “believed the same things as the president” when it came to election conspiracies and was going out of his way to accommodate White House requests. “It was clear that Kash was just trying to hold on to his job, and willing to do anything it takes,” this person said.

Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sought to use Patel’s appearance under oath last month to extract a commitment that the FBI director would say no to the president if asked to deploy federal agents to polling locations. They failed. When Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Patel to confirm that FBI staff would not be physically present at polling sites, he responded: “I don’t know that we can’t legally do it.” Since the end of the Civil War, federal law has prohibited the deployment of armed federal agents to election sites “unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” When asked whether he agreed with Trump’s statement that Democrats can win elections only by cheating, Patel said that “the information you’re discussing involves ongoing investigations” and declined to answer the question. He later elaborated to say that “based upon the Russiagate hoax, and everything else that’s happened, the president is completely justified in making his opinions known as does any president before him.”

As I watched, I was reminded of a message relayed from one DOJ official to another this summer when asked about the Justice Department manual, which prescribes specific rules and procedures to ensure that the department is never perceived to be playing politics with elections. “I was told the Justice Manual isn’t a thing,” the official told me. Instead, the official said that this was the answer they received: “There are no rules. Just make sure Republicans win.” When I asked about this, a DOJ spokesperson said, “That is not, and has never been, Department guidance.”

[Read: The FBI director is MIA]

Patel has repeatedly directed FBI officials to reinvestigate Trump’s loss in the 2020 election—and he has removed those who pushed back. In January, Paul W. Brown, the special agent in charge of the Atlanta field office, was replaced after he expressed reservations about following orders to seize 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, according to four current and former officials familiar with the situation. (Brown did not respond to requests for comment; a spokesperson for the FBI said, “Mr. Brown retired.”)

In July, the FBI sent emails across the bureau announcing a “Director’s Office priority effort,” requiring all FBI field offices to “immediately surge support” to the FBI’s Fulton investigation. Roughly 260 FBI employees were ordered to drop their other responsibilities for two weeks in order to review data related to the seized ballots, working weekends and overtime at substantial cost to taxpayers. Staff were instructed to compare the Fulton voting records with information in another database, an effort that those who participated said seemed aimed at identifying fraud, but in practice was prone to errors and wasn’t considered up to FBI standards.

Two FBI analysts were escorted out of the office after they raised questions about the process. The FBI declined to comment on personnel issues but said in a statement that “individuals are only removed from the Bureau if they engage in weaponization of law enforcement, act unethically, or undermine the FBI mission.”

Those familiar with the Fulton effort told me it didn’t yield anything substantive—numerous reviews have found no evidence of significant fraud in Georgia in 2020, or anywhere else—but they also said they believe that the episode this summer was just a prelude of what’s to come.

“We have every reason to believe that Patel will aid and abet Trump” in the pursuit of election-related conspiracy theories and undermining trust in the midterm elections, one former official told me. Agents assigned to coordinate with the state and local election officials who actually administer elections say the once-collaborative partnerships are now tense and fraught with suspicion. Their former partners in election protection now openly question whether the FBI will in fact protect American elections. “It’s full-on warfare to get anything out of any election official,” one former official told me.

In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in May, Patel described personally directing election-related “grand conspiracy” investigations “in multiple jurisdictions,” saying it is what he spends much of his time on. But career officials scoff at what they see as a misuse of resources. “It’s a waste of time,” one FBI employee involved in the election investigations told me, describing how supervisors were asking for the same documents over and over. The requests originated with instructions from headquarters, and were often passed along with tacit acknowledgment from managers in the field that they knew there was nothing to be found.

Many current and former officials described an unusual number of calls Patel receives from the White House and its allies throughout the day, relaying requests for FBI activity or updates. Officials told me that Patel openly acknowledges his limited agency, citing directions from Trump, Stephen Miller, and other White House staff. “I’ve personally heard him say, ‘I have to do this for the White House,’” one former FBI official told me.

The White House did not deny that Miller gives direction to the FBI, and confirmed that he “interacts with all law-enforcement agencies on a regular basis.” FBI Operations Director Joe Perez said in a statement that the bureau “receives referrals from a variety of places, assesses the facts of the allegation, documents the referral, and we make the decision whether or not to proceed accordingly under an authorized purpose as we have always done.”

[Read: Kash Patel’s personalized bourbon stash]

The most well-staffed election-related investigation is being run out of the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida, and Patel has been an enthusiastic enabler. He has directed significant FBI resources to the effort. “Patel has said yes to everything. Every single thing” that senior leadership has wanted of the investigation, one former official familiar with the investigation told me.

The investigation has yielded little to nothing, but Patel’s response has been to escalate further. “They just keep throwing more people at it,” one FBI employee told me. A former FBI employee told me that the investigation has become a running joke, and staff have continually had to manufacture new excuses to be unavailable so they don’t get asked to participate.

The FBI and DOJ declined to provide details of how many FBI employees had staffed the investigation and what previous assignments were dropped when they were reassigned to the probe. The FBI also declined to provide any details on how much money has been spent on the effort to date.

[Read: Kash Patel will do anything for Trump]

The conspiracy case appears to have hit a particularly rough stretch last month, when the Trump loyalist Joe diGenova resigned from his role overseeing the investigation, citing pressures to deliver indictments. He would not answer my questions when I reached him shortly after his resignation, but he told the New York Post, “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.” (He later added to the Associated Press that “there’s plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution. It just takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little faster than others—and you can’t do that.”)

In recent days, more resignations have followed, including that of Kurt Olsen, who was appointed by Trump to be the White House director of election security and integrity last year before joining the conspiracy investigation at DOJ. Olsen was a prominent participant in the “Stop the Steal” campaign following the 2020 vote and was later sanctioned for making “unequivocally false” statements to a federal court. While working at the White House, Olsen made a referral that led to the FBI’s ballot seizure in Fulton. Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.  

One law-enforcement official told me that the FBI’s role in the “grand conspiracy” investigation was particularly flawed and had alarmed officials in the deputy attorney general and attorney general’s offices. The investigators’ approach was a “total waste of resources” that “led to nothing,” the official told me. (A DOJ spokesperson denied that senior leadership had expressed concern.)

Orders from the White House were described to me as remarkably specific, down to individual names. “The president wants indictments. He wants people in handcuffs. He wants the headlines,” one former official told me, “no matter how thin” the underlying facts are. When I asked what would happen if the president didn’t get the indictments he was seeking, the official said Patel’s and Blanche’s jobs would be on the line. “They’ve spent so much money on this. They’re going to have to come up with something.”  

A spokesperson for the White House said in a statement that “the claim that the White House dictates who the Department investigates or charges is false. Investigative decisions are made by the Department based on evidence. No one is charged because of a headline, and no one is charged without a grand jury finding probable cause.” The U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida did not respond to a request for comment. One law-enforcement official told me that the recent “drama” among DOJ officials overseeing the investigation did not reflect a lack of evidence of a crime, and to expect “developments imminently,” including possible indictments in the weeks ahead.

Other administration officials and those close to the White House dismissed the idea that Patel would be removed if he ultimately fails to deliver what the president wants. Some have speculated that Trump favors reassignments over firings because he believes that his administration can protect active government officials from complying with subpoenas.

Others told me that Patel remains in his job because confirming any replacement would require near-unanimous support from Senate Republicans, something the president no longer has. Some Republicans fear, meanwhile, that overzealous action by Patel could make their problems worse. “It would be an absolute disaster for Republicans in the midterms, especially those in vulnerable races, if Patel sent FBI agents to the polls or seized ballots,” one Republican staffer told me. “People have to trust their government, in the integrity of our elections.”

Previous FBI directors have gone out of their way as elections neared to show that they weren’t doing the president’s bidding. Patel has done the opposite: Long ago he dispensed with any pretense that he’s apolitical. Last month, while appearing with the president at a Long Island police academy, the FBI director effusively thanked the president throughout his remarks. The event looked and sounded almost identical to a Trump rally, complete with endorsements of Republican candidates and attacks on Democrats. Patel was transparent about why he holds the most powerful position in American law enforcement, and what keeps him there: “President Trump, I’m living the American dream because of you.”

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Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed before God, Fox Nation, and Donald Trump that he would punish the “deep state” for its manifold transgressions, especially the (actually nonexistent) conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.

“I’ve been with the president nearly since day one on this,” he said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo. “I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need. We’re working with our prosecutors at the Department of Justice under Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrests, and it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon.”

That was five months ago. Patel has not yet delivered on his promise. But in interviews with more than 40 current and former administration officials, FBI employees, and members of Congress and their staffers, as well as others close to the White House, I’ve learned that it is not for lack of trying.

The people I spoke with described Patel as desperate to help the Justice Department indict putative malefactors and stimulate headlines to please the president. Nearly all of the people I spoke with would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation if their name appeared in the story. Patel has filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic and me in response to my reporting earlier this year that he has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

In recent months, Patel has been briefed on the FBI’s “election integrity” investigations in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, and beyond. Officials told me their understanding is that many of the election-related investigation requests came directly from the White House, many times with the instruction that “this is a big deal for the president” or “this is a push from 47.” But all of that attention hasn’t yielded results. In meetings, Patel has expressed frustration that there have been no new findings, and instructed staff to “look harder” or “look again,” according to three people familiar with the conversations.

The FBI’s preoccupation with the 2020 election represents a dramatic break with its past. Though the bureau—one of the world’s most famous and most powerful law-enforcement agencies—has experienced more than its share of controversies and episodes of overreach, it has also been dedicated to criminal investigation based in evidence, science, and reality. The commitment of personnel, resources, and time to investigate a conspiracy theory that was manufactured by Trump to explain his electoral defeat marks a decisive pivot away from its historical role.

Patel’s aggressive pursuit of the conspiracy investigation has helped him keep his job. Reports that Trump is keen to push him out have diminished. Patel’s predecessors had always sought to demonstrate their independence by creating operational and optical distance from the White House—especially when it came to the sanctity and neutrality of elections. Patel has taken a radically different course, attempting to translate Trump’s eternal election-related grievances into a core law-enforcement mission of the federal government. “Patel is the only guy who never says no,” a Republican operative close to the White House told me. “And the president likes that.”

[Read: Trump’s purge may be just beginning]

In response to a three-page memo I wrote outlining 17 detailed questions for him regarding the FBI’s pivot to election-conspiracy investigations, Patel responded in a most curious fashion. Instead of addressing my questions, he wrote: “I’m still looking for my gold-plated jet ski in the English Channel; you all know where it is. Free ride if you help me find it.”

I did not understand this response. I have never written about, or asked Patel or the FBI about, anything having to do with Jet Skis or the English Channel. A bit of Googling, however, uncovered the probable root of his reply. On July 10, MS NOW published a story concerning Patel’s political difficulties, some of which, the story said, related to his lifestyle. Included in the story was a graphic of, among other things, a white Jet Ski, a set of golf clubs, and a private jet. Patel responded to the MS NOW story on X, writing, “Nah, my jet ski is gold plated… dumbass.”  

Put simply, Patel responded to The Atlantic’s questions about the FBI’s election investigations by referring to a graphic that appeared on an unrelated news story on another media company’s website.

Other FBI officials, however, did respond to my questions. The FBI’s press office sent me statements from five other named officials—Chris Raia, Andrew Bailey, Chad Yarborough, Joe Perez, and Matt Fodor—who defended Patel, claimed my reporting was “false,” and insisted that the FBI was “united.” Many of the statements used almost-identical language and did not deny that the FBI was focused on the alleged election conspiracy. The FBI published my questions and its answers on X last night, before this story was published.

A spokesperson for the FBI said in a statement that “election security is and will continue to be one of this FBI’s highest national security priorities, and we will make no apologies for any work to ensure every American citizen’s sacred right to vote is protected from criminal interference.” The spokesperson said there has been a “500% increase in election integrity related investigations and arrests just this year alone” and denied that there had been any internal concerns raised about the bureau’s approach to election-related investigations.

But others I spoke with told me that Patel’s stance is redefining how the bureau prepares for an election. One striking example came last month when FBI and DOJ staff attended an “election integrity” training session. In the past, these trainings have focused on how to respond to the most common threats to poll workers or voting locations. Some attendees were alarmed that a focus of this year’s training was about voting by undocumented immigrants, a statistically rare phenomenon that has nevertheless preoccupied Trump and others on the right. There was little mention of the prohibition on armed federal law enforcement being stationed at the polls.

Agents across the country have been seeking counsel in recent weeks about how to respond to FBI directives related to the election, according to six current and former FBI and DOJ supervisors and outside defense attorneys who told me they have received calls. “Agents are nervous, talking among themselves,” said a former DOJ official who has received multiple requests for advice unlike anything this person has seen before. Another former senior FBI official told me he had received calls from dozens of his former colleagues looking for counsel and describing “a real effort to bend people to the narrative” of the president’s election-conspiracy theories. One agent told me he contemplates Election Day and thinks: “I’m either gonna be sick that day or they are going to have to fire me.” There is no question that people in the FBI are rattled. What is uncertain is the degree to which they should be.

On Monday, Andrew Bailey, one of the FBI’s co–deputy directors, unexpectedly announced that he was leaving the bureau, citing a desire to spend more time with his family. Bailey had overseen election-related investigations, and had supported Trump’s false fraud claims. But several employees I spoke with said he would frequently raise questions about proposed law-enforcement actions in meetings. “Bailey brings up the Constitution. He will say, ‘The law prevents you from doing that,’” one former FBI official told me. Now he is gone, leaving employees to wonder whether anyone left at a senior level will push back on Patel or the president. (In a statement, Bailey denied raising questions about proposed actions, saying, “This is absolutely false.”)

Another shake-up in recent days came when several attorneys left their assignments in the investigation into the alleged “grand conspiracy.” Two former DOJ officials told me the prosecutors quit because they had clashed with senior department leadership amid pressure to deliver indictments before the midterm elections. Among those exiting are “true believers” who were committed to the president’s goals, as one law-enforcement official described it to me.

For more than a century, FBI agents have sworn an oath to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. That mission becomes complicated when a president is so intensely focused on the outcome of FBI investigations. One former senior FBI official told me that Patel has told his staff that he “believed the same things as the president” when it came to election conspiracies and was going out of his way to accommodate White House requests. “It was clear that Kash was just trying to hold on to his job, and willing to do anything it takes,” this person said.

Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sought to use Patel’s appearance under oath last month to extract a commitment that the FBI director would say no to the president if asked to deploy federal agents to polling locations. They failed. When Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Patel to confirm that FBI staff would not be physically present at polling sites, he responded: “I don’t know that we can’t legally do it.” Since the end of the Civil War, federal law has prohibited the deployment of armed federal agents to election sites “unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” When asked whether he agreed with Trump’s statement that Democrats can win elections only by cheating, Patel said that “the information you’re discussing involves ongoing investigations” and declined to answer the question. He later elaborated to say that “based upon the Russiagate hoax, and everything else that’s happened, the president is completely justified in making his opinions known as does any president before him.”

As I watched, I was reminded of a message relayed from one DOJ official to another this summer when asked about the Justice Department manual, which prescribes specific rules and procedures to ensure that the department is never perceived to be playing politics with elections. “I was told the Justice Manual isn’t a thing,” the official told me. Instead, the official said that this was the answer they received: “There are no rules. Just make sure Republicans win.” When I asked about this, a DOJ spokesperson said, “That is not, and has never been, Department guidance.”

[Read: The FBI director is MIA]

Patel has repeatedly directed FBI officials to reinvestigate Trump’s loss in the 2020 election—and he has removed those who pushed back. In January, Paul W. Brown, the special agent in charge of the Atlanta field office, was replaced after he expressed reservations about following orders to seize 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, according to four current and former officials familiar with the situation. (Brown did not respond to requests for comment; a spokesperson for the FBI said, “Mr. Brown retired.”)

In July, the FBI sent emails across the bureau announcing a “Director’s Office priority effort,” requiring all FBI field offices to “immediately surge support” to the FBI’s Fulton investigation. Roughly 260 FBI employees were ordered to drop their other responsibilities for two weeks in order to review data related to the seized ballots, working weekends and overtime at substantial cost to taxpayers. Staff were instructed to compare the Fulton voting records with information in another database, an effort that those who participated said seemed aimed at identifying fraud, but in practice was prone to errors and wasn’t considered up to FBI standards.

Two FBI analysts were escorted out of the office after they raised questions about the process. The FBI declined to comment on personnel issues but said in a statement that “individuals are only removed from the Bureau if they engage in weaponization of law enforcement, act unethically, or undermine the FBI mission.”

Those familiar with the Fulton effort told me it didn’t yield anything substantive—numerous reviews have found no evidence of significant fraud in Georgia in 2020, or anywhere else—but they also said they believe that the episode this summer was just a prelude of what’s to come.

“We have every reason to believe that Patel will aid and abet Trump” in the pursuit of election-related conspiracy theories and undermining trust in the midterm elections, one former official told me. Agents assigned to coordinate with the state and local election officials who actually administer elections say the once-collaborative partnerships are now tense and fraught with suspicion. Their former partners in election protection now openly question whether the FBI will in fact protect American elections. “It’s full-on warfare to get anything out of any election official,” one former official told me.

In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in May, Patel described personally directing election-related “grand conspiracy” investigations “in multiple jurisdictions,” saying it is what he spends much of his time on. But career officials scoff at what they see as a misuse of resources. “It’s a waste of time,” one FBI employee involved in the election investigations told me, describing how supervisors were asking for the same documents over and over. The requests originated with instructions from headquarters, and were often passed along with tacit acknowledgment from managers in the field that they knew there was nothing to be found.

Many current and former officials described an unusual number of calls Patel receives from the White House and its allies throughout the day, relaying requests for FBI activity or updates. Officials told me that Patel openly acknowledges his limited agency, citing directions from Trump, Stephen Miller, and other White House staff. “I’ve personally heard him say, ‘I have to do this for the White House,’” one former FBI official told me.

The White House did not deny that Miller gives direction to the FBI, and confirmed that he “interacts with all law-enforcement agencies on a regular basis.” FBI Operations Director Joe Perez said in a statement that the bureau “receives referrals from a variety of places, assesses the facts of the allegation, documents the referral, and we make the decision whether or not to proceed accordingly under an authorized purpose as we have always done.”

[Read: Kash Patel’s personalized bourbon stash]

The most well-staffed election-related investigation is being run out of the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida, and Patel has been an enthusiastic enabler. He has directed significant FBI resources to the effort. “Patel has said yes to everything. Every single thing” that senior leadership has wanted of the investigation, one former official familiar with the investigation told me.

The investigation has yielded little to nothing, but Patel’s response has been to escalate further. “They just keep throwing more people at it,” one FBI employee told me. A former FBI employee told me that the investigation has become a running joke, and staff have continually had to manufacture new excuses to be unavailable so they don’t get asked to participate.

The FBI and DOJ declined to provide details of how many FBI employees had staffed the investigation and what previous assignments were dropped when they were reassigned to the probe. The FBI also declined to provide any details on how much money has been spent on the effort to date.

[Read: Kash Patel will do anything for Trump]

The conspiracy case appears to have hit a particularly rough stretch last month, when the Trump loyalist Joe diGenova resigned from his role overseeing the investigation, citing pressures to deliver indictments. He would not answer my questions when I reached him shortly after his resignation, but he told the New York Post, “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.” (He later added to the Associated Press that “there’s plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution. It just takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little faster than others—and you can’t do that.”)

In recent days, more resignations have followed, including that of Kurt Olsen, who was appointed by Trump to be the White House director of election security and integrity last year before joining the conspiracy investigation at DOJ. Olsen was a prominent participant in the “Stop the Steal” campaign following the 2020 vote and was later sanctioned for making “unequivocally false” statements to a federal court. While working at the White House, Olsen made a referral that led to the FBI’s ballot seizure in Fulton. Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.  

One law-enforcement official told me that the FBI’s role in the “grand conspiracy” investigation was particularly flawed and had alarmed officials in the deputy attorney general and attorney general’s offices. The investigators’ approach was a “total waste of resources” that “led to nothing,” the official told me. (A DOJ spokesperson denied that senior leadership had expressed concern.)

Orders from the White House were described to me as remarkably specific, down to individual names. “The president wants indictments. He wants people in handcuffs. He wants the headlines,” one former official told me, “no matter how thin” the underlying facts are. When I asked what would happen if the president didn’t get the indictments he was seeking, the official said Patel’s and Blanche’s jobs would be on the line. “They’ve spent so much money on this. They’re going to have to come up with something.”  

A spokesperson for the White House said in a statement that “the claim that the White House dictates who the Department investigates or charges is false. Investigative decisions are made by the Department based on evidence. No one is charged because of a headline, and no one is charged without a grand jury finding probable cause.” The U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida did not respond to a request for comment. One law-enforcement official told me that the recent “drama” among DOJ officials overseeing the investigation did not reflect a lack of evidence of a crime, and to expect “developments imminently,” including possible indictments in the weeks ahead.

Other administration officials and those close to the White House dismissed the idea that Patel would be removed if he ultimately fails to deliver what the president wants. Some have speculated that Trump favors reassignments over firings because he believes that his administration can protect active government officials from complying with subpoenas.

Others told me that Patel remains in his job because confirming any replacement would require near-unanimous support from Senate Republicans, something the president no longer has. Some Republicans fear, meanwhile, that overzealous action by Patel could make their problems worse. “It would be an absolute disaster for Republicans in the midterms, especially those in vulnerable races, if Patel sent FBI agents to the polls or seized ballots,” one Republican staffer told me. “People have to trust their government, in the integrity of our elections.”

Previous FBI directors have gone out of their way as elections neared to show that they weren’t doing the president’s bidding. Patel has done the opposite: Long ago he dispensed with any pretense that he’s apolitical. Last month, while appearing with the president at a Long Island police academy, the FBI director effusively thanked the president throughout his remarks. The event looked and sounded almost identical to a Trump rally, complete with endorsements of Republican candidates and attacks on Democrats. Patel was transparent about why he holds the most powerful position in American law enforcement, and what keeps him there: “President Trump, I’m living the American dream because of you.”