The FBI Lowers Its Standards For Agents

Feb 22, 2026 03:26 PM EST, Sun

The FBI wouldn’t have to lower standards if Trump hadn’t fired the agents that investigated Trump in his first term, the election interference case, the insurrection, and the classified documents that he stole and actively hid at Mar-a-Lago.

FBI reportedly lowers standards for agents, adding to an unfortunate pattern

Trumpism is defined in large part by a lowering of standards. The bureau is apparently just keeping up.

Feb. 20, 2026, 10:58 AM EST By Steve Benen

The FBI has changed in a great many ways since former podcast personality Kash Patel became its director exactly one year ago this week, and the list of changes is still growing. Reuters reported:

The FBI plans to make it easier for existing employees to become agents, removing two long-standing steps in vetting applicants as the bureau faces a staffing crunch under President Donald Trump’s administration, according to two people familiar with the move.

FBI Director Kash Patel is expected to eliminate a requirement that support staff already working in the FBI who apply to become special agents sit for an interview and complete a writing assessment.

The Reuters report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, was based on two sources, including Jeff Crocker, a retired FBI supervisory special agent, who vetted special agent applicants during his more than 20-year career in the FBI. As Crocker described it, under the new model, existing employees who pass a written exam through an online portal would be able to go directly to the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia, to train as a new agent.

An FBI spokesperson did not dispute that the process would be changed, although he denied that the bureau was lowering its standards. Reuters’ sources said the opposite.

“The consequences of allowing such individuals lacking the impressive and necessary resumes to become FBI agents simply by passing a web-based test will be both seismic and generationally harmful to the republic,” Crocker said.

Complicating matters is the familiarity of the circumstances. It was last summer, for example, when the Trump administration also lowered its standards for those seeking to work as agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Around the same time, the Republican administration also lowered Justice Department standards on the qualifications to serve as immigration judges.

Indeed, by some measures, the entirety of the Trump presidency has been a grand experiment in what happens when a nation lowers its standards.

Trump informally lowered the standards for what it takes to lead the FBI, and what it takes to serve in the Cabinet, and what it takes to serve as a U.S. attorney, and what it takes to be a success in the private sector and what it takes to serve as vice president.

The president himself was, in the recent past, a television game-show host who didn’t know anything about governing, who never served a day in any public post and who arguably had no business running to serve as the chief executive of the world’s preeminent superpower.

Trumpism, in other words, is defined in large part by a lowering of standards. The FBI is apparently just keeping up.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Related Posts