Trump's Justice Department shutters specialized FBI team combating foreign election interference threats

[highplainsdem]

Source: CNN

The FBI is preparing to disband a team of specialists charged with combating foreign threats to US elections, a source familiar tells CNN.

The shuttering of the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force and planned reassigning of team members follows a directive from incoming and newly sworn in US Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolving the team.

“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion, the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded,” Bondi wrote in a memo issued Wednesday.

The special task force was established by former FBI Director Christopher Wray in 2017 following a wave of foreign influence operations targeting the US electoral process, including Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election that Trump won.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-gaza-news-02-06-25#cm6srdiyc00053b6mju3tx6qj

[lonely bird]

1. Pam Bondi is a disgusting piece of excrement

Thanks a lot, MAGAts.

[Native]

3. You are too kind.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Of course.... we're all friends here.

[LudwigPastorius]

4. After all, the 2026 mid-terms are right around the corner.

Right, Trumpistas? Got to maintain the God-Emperor's stranglehold on power.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. Maddowblog-AG Pam Bondi shutters the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force

Pam Bondi is the first attorney in history to have been a lobbyist for foreign governments. She also just disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
https://bsky.app/profile/jacquesd59.bsky.social/post/3lhmi2vnqds2p

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/ag-pam-bondi-shutters-fbis-foreign-influence-task-force-rcna191221

But there’s something else from Bondi’s résumé that set her apart from every other attorney general nominee in American history: The Republican lawyer worked as a lobbyist for foreign governments. In fact, the nation’s chief law enforcement official, as recently as 2020, was a registered foreign agent who was responsible for “personally and substantially” engaging in delivering services for the government of Qatar, according to a consulting agreement filed with the Justice Department.

Ordinarily, this isn’t the sort of background one expects to find on a U.S. attorney general’s résumé. Senate Republicans, however, didn’t much care and confirmed Bondi anyway.

On Wednesday, Bondi took the oath in the Oval Office — with Trump nearby, looking over her shoulder. Hours later, as NBC News reported, the former foreign agent shuttered her country’s Foreign Influence Task Force.

In a little-noticed directive on her first day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered a halt to a years-old federal law enforcement effort to combat secret influence campaigns by China, Russia and other adversaries that try to curry favor and sow chaos in American politics. Buried on the fourth page of one of 14 policy memos Bondi issued Wednesday, the order disbands the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and pares back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite years of warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies that foreign malign influence operations involving disinformation were a growing and dangerous threat.

This task force was established in 2017 — by Trump’s first handpicked FBI director, Chris Wray, before he fell out of favor — in response to several foreign influence operations......

But in the opening weeks of Trump’s second term, his handpicked attorney general nevertheless decided that it’d be a good idea to close the FBI office focused on combating foreign influence campaigns.

Frank Figliuzzi, former head of FBI counterintelligence and an NBC News contributor, called the developments “astounding,” adding: “It’s now a free-for-all for foreign intel services seeking influence.”

It’s going to be a long four years.