Michael Feinberg, then a senior FBI official with a background in counterintelligence work, was told on 31 May 2025, that he would be receiving no further promotions and that he was to be polygraphed about his friendship with Peter Strzok, a former senior FBI special agent disliked by FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
Feinberg has published an article about his experience for the Lawfare blog under the title,
"Goodby to All That: My Resignation from the FBI." The following is an excerpt:
Quote:Prior to that day [31 May 2025], I had never faced any sort of disciplinary review or investigation. And to be clear, I was not accused of violating any rules or regulations this time either, nor had any of my cases fallen short of institutional standards. 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.
Yet rules turned out not to matter much. And so, that weekend, Bongino informed my SAC, who in turn informed me, that he was halting—and actually reversing—my professional advancement.
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. I’ll simply note that we 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). Our own friendship began with a discovery that we liked the same bands and shared an interest in trying new restaurants; the notion that I was his “protégé,” as one X account stated, was news to us both. Most of our conversations since he left the Bureau have involved debating the relative merits of New Order versus Joy Division. If the fact that I sang along to “Every Day is Like Sunday” while he stood next to me at a Morrissey concert actually represents an imminent danger to the Bureau’s integrity, then, for the first time in nearly a half-century on this earth, I’m truly at a loss for words.
Yet under Bongino’s reign, it was apparently enough. My SAC 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. She gave me no details about what position or office I would be sent to once my time as a leader prematurely concluded.
Furthermore, she told me, 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. 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.
When my SAC 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. I sent the following resignation letter...
It seems to me that it was entirely inappropriate for the FBI to require Feinberg to submit a polygraph interrogation about his friendship with Strzok (who to my knowledge has never been convicted of any crime and is not presently under criminal investigation).
I would be interested in anyone else's thoughts on this.
