Bailey's FBI Exit Takes Effect Oct. 2, as New Details Surface on Patel Rift and Demoted Agents' Records

Andrew Bailey's resignation as FBI co-deputy director became public Monday morning. Since then, additional reporting has filled in two things the initial announcement left out: exactly when he's leaving, and how bad his relationship with Director Kash Patel actually got.

CBS News reported Bailey's resignation takes effect October 2, citing multiple sources. That's a five-day window before he's fully out, giving the bureau time to sort out who inherits his portfolio, which has included overseeing election-related investigations, including the FBI's January ballot seizure in Fulton County, Georgia.

The bigger new detail is the inside account of the Bailey-Patel dynamic. CBS News reported that from the start, Bailey wasn't invited to meetings Patel's staff was told to treat him as subordinate to co-deputy Dan Bongino, with Patel instructing aides to call himself "director," Bongino "deputy director," and Bailey merely "co-deputy director." Two sources told CBS that Patel kept cutting Bailey out of meetings the deputy director should have attended, because Bailey kept flagging things he considered unconstitutional.

This claim comes from two unnamed sources describing Patel's motive, not from Patel himself or an on-record FBI statement. Neither Patel nor the FBI has confirmed or denied that particular characterization. Patel's public statement, posted on X Monday, was warm: he thanked Bailey for "dedicated service" and said "his fantastic contribution instituting critical reforms which resulted in our historic success will live on."

Bailey's own resignation post didn't hint at any rift. He thanked Trump, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Patel by name, and said he's "confident Director Patel will continue to reform the FBI." Multiple sources told MS NOW's Ken Dilanian and NBC News that Bailey was also frustrated at being passed over for the FBI director job itself, a role once floated to him after Patel generated unfavorable headlines. The FBI's Rapid Response account on X called that characterization false.

The demoted agents now have names and résumés attached

Salon's reporting adds identifying detail that earlier coverage of the demotions lacked. The two counterterrorism officials removed from the FBI's Washington Field Office Friday are Michael Burgwald, who led counterterrorism operations there, and his deputy, Courtland Rae. Both were reassigned to FBI headquarters.

Burgwald is a West Point graduate who has received multiple attorney general's awards. Rae helped oversee the FBI's response to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Both worked on investigations tied to the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, according to Salon. That's decades of combined counterterrorism experience removed from a Washington office that Salon notes is operating while the United States remains at war with Iran.

The underlying dispute is about whether the calls to Katie Miller, the conservative podcaster married to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, ever rose to the level the FBI treats as a real threat. CNN reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the field office team reviewed the calls and found they didn't meet the threshold for an FBI investigation and had no connection to terrorism. One former FBI official told MS NOW, "Harassing phone calls aren't even in the ballpark of terrorism unless an actual terrorist is doing the dialing."

The White House disputes that framing. Spokesperson Lauren Bis told Salon that "senior leadership at the FBI determined they were stifling investigations into very serious threats and made a unilateral decision to remove them," and said the Millers had never even met or interacted with Burgwald or Rae. Washington Field Office chief Darren Cox has said the same thing in his own statement: "Director Patel did not order this decision. This was a personnel decision made at the Washington field office level alone based on our constant evaluation of mission needs. Any suggestion otherwise is false."

Neither side has released the actual content of the calls Katie Miller received. Salon notes that detail remains unpublished, which means the public still can't independently judge whether the field office's threat assessment was too cautious or the demotion was retaliation for a conclusion the Millers didn't like. Bloomberg Law, which first reported the demotions, said Washington Field Office leadership and the Miller family shared frustration over the pace of the review, and that Patel himself was also displeased.

Patel has not named Bailey's successor. With Bongino gone since January and Bailey out October 2, the FBI's experimental co-deputy structure now rests on one person: Chris Raia, the former assistant director in charge of the bureau's New York field office. Whether Patel restores a single deputy director post, or hands Bailey's election and counterterrorism oversight duties to Raia alone, is an open question the bureau hasn't answered.