WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the FBI’s New York field office, reportedly refused the Justice Department’s review of agents participating in politically sensitive investigations, told colleagues Monday that he had been directed to do so after retirement from the bureau.
James Dennehy said in a letter to colleagues obtained by the Associated Press that he was told to give up his retirement paper late Friday, but there was no reason. The move comes as a period when new FBI Director Kash Patel took office last month, as the host of the conservative podcast and Trump loyalist Dan Bongino was appointed deputy director during a turbulent period of the inning.
The Justice Department has a high degree of unusual demand for the FBI, which is still in turmoil. Some in the bureau consider the January order to be a possible pioneer of mass shooting. According to news reports at the time, he was a retired Marine Dennehy, one of those who resisted the order, and he was ready to “dig” in a message he wrote to his colleagues.
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“Many times in my life I’ve been told, ‘When you find yourself in a hole, it’s sometimes better to exit the dig.” Tighten. I will never stop defending this joint. I just do it with pride from outside the wire. Danny wrote in a Monday message that he told colleagues he was forced to serve as the leader of one of the FBI’s busiest and most prestigious offices, a job he had been in for several months.
In his statement that he would miss the FBI’s top ten list, he said: “Independent. We won’t bend. We won’t stagger. We won’t sacrifice something that suits anything or anyone.”
The FBI declined to comment, and a spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately return the news seeking comment. NBC News first reported on Dennehy’s strike.
Last September, then-FBI director Christopher Wray was in charge of Dennehy’s New York field office.
He joined the FBI in 2002 with a counterintelligence agent working in the New York Field Office.
He moved to the FBI headquarters in Washington in 2015 and became a chief a year later. His other missions include serving as Chief of Staff for the National Security Department, special agent for the Counterintelligence and Cyber Department of the New York Field Office, and agents in charge of Newark, New Jersey.
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Associated Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to the report in New York and Washington’s Alanna Durkin Richer.
