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FBI Has slowed down its investigation amid the second longest government shut down in American history.
Now in the 30th day of the shutdown, the Bureau has no money left to pay informers or provide intelligence Medicine or buying a gun, an FBI spokesperson said the gap is putting national security at risk.
“In the shutdown, the F.B.I. eyes And Ear Go into the dark,'” said retired FBI agent Tom Simon, who worked on counterterrorism and criminal cases and at one time served on a team that recruited and paid informants.
“Without money to pay informants, the Bureau loses its most important role Source Real-time intelligence,” said Simon, who retired in 2021 after 26 years at the FBI and now works as a private investigator in Florida.
The FBI does not provide detailed public information about how its $10.7 billion budget is spent and it is unclear what portion of the total is being held up because of the shutdown, according to five current and three former FBI employees.
Sources said the shutdown has halted FBI funds used for operational travel, such as when an informant needs to travel to meet with a drug supplier or boss or another investigation subject. FBI employees also do not have the funds to travel outside their local areas.
In response to Reuters inquiries about the impact of the shutdown on the investigation, the FBI acknowledged that its operations had been affected.
“President Trump has repeatedly called for reopening the federal government and the FBI strongly agrees with that position,” an FBI spokesperson told Reuters.
“As Director (Kash) Patel has previously said, this shutdown puts the FBI in the extremely difficult position of reallocating already limited resources across a number of critical law enforcement efforts… There is no doubt that those who are choosing to play politics with government funding are putting national security at risk.”
The shutdown has furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers, interfered with the collection and distribution of economic data and threatened to cut food and education aid programs.
chairman donald trumpThe administration has worked to find ways to continue paying some law enforcement agents and active-duty military, but FBI employees said the bureau’s operations are still not fully funded.
Minority Democrats in Congress have blocked their votes on funding bills in an effort to increase subsidies on health insurance for about 24 million Americans.
“The government shutdown Impacting a number of investigations, national security, criminal investigations, white collar, etc.,” said former agent Dan Bruner, who worked on cases involving the MS-13 gang.
Managing informants who have not been paid requires “some massaging by experienced agents” to keep the case going, Brunner said, adding that this could prove challenging because many experienced agents have left the bureau in the past six months.
Last week, the FBI paid its special agents — a small portion of its workforce — but it’s unclear whether they or anyone else at the bureau will be paid again during the shutdown.
“It’s a problem that agents are getting paid and everyone else isn’t,” Bruner said. “If it goes into the second or third paycheck, there will be some serious cracks and you can’t have that.”