Two veteran Washington, DC, FBI agents have been reassigned over their handling of a probe involving threats made to conservative podcaster Katie Miller, the wife of senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, CNN claimed in a report late Saturday.
Sourcing “two people familiar with the move,” the network reported that Michael Burgwald, the special agent in charge of counterterrorism matters at the bureau’s D.C. field office, and his deputy, Courtland Rae, “were ousted from their positions by bureau leadership after investigators determined that allegedly harassing phone calls Katie Miller received from unknown individuals did not warrant further investigation.”
According to CNN:
The field office team that reviewed the reported harassing calls determined they did not meet the threshold required for an FBI investigation, and no nexus to terrorism was identified, the sources said. This decision did not sit well with bureau leadership, and the two senior field office agents were removed from their positions, according to the sources.
The CNN report intimated the move could have been generated by FBI director Kash Patel, who it called “a fierce loyalist of President Donald Trump,” writing he has “fired, demoted, or forced into retirement countless career employees who handled past investigations into Trump and his allies.”
Those moves have resulted in lawsuits, the cable news network reported.
Bloomberg Law also reported the reassignment, and the FBI specifically called out writer Ben Penn on what it called “FAKE News.”
In a post on the official FBI’s Rapid Response X account, leading with the words “Dear FAKE News…,” Darren Cox, senior executive for the D.C. Field Office, said in a 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.
Bloomberg Law reported the reassignment, citing “three people familiar with the matter” and said the two agents “were both demoted and sent to bureau headquarters Friday”:
FBI leadership removed two counterterrorism leaders due to dissatisfaction with their investigation of allegedly threatening phone calls made to senior White House aide Stephen Miller’s wife, said three people familiar with the matter.
The head of the FBI Washington Field Office’s counterterrorism division — which is responsible for Middle East threats — and his deputy were both demoted and sent to bureau headquarters Friday, said the individuals.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis told Bloomberg Law that Stephen and Katie Miller had no interaction with the two agents, also saying, “Senior leadership at the FBI determined they were stifling investigations into very serious threats and made a unilateral decision to remove them.”
CNN also implied that the investigation was started because flyers critical of the Millers were posted in the family’s neighborhood and unnamed “career agents” pushed back, saying it was a waste of time and FBI resources.
Bloomberg Law, however, reported that the Millers and their young children relocated from their Arlington home into military housing last fall while law enforcement was “investigating protest activity targeting the family, which the Millers viewed as criminal threats.”
“The Millers did not relocate because of protests,” Bis said in her statement to that outlet. “There was an elaborate, well-documented stalking, doxing and threat campaign targeting the Millers’ residence.”
Breitbart News contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
