From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

From the moment he was appointed director of the FBI,

Cash Patel has invited controversy and concern about what his leadership would look like

and how it might affect the agency that's tasked with protecting the United States from threats at home and abroad.

Today, my colleagues Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser spoke to dozens of current and former FBI employees

about how the FBI has been transformed.

Emily Bazelon, welcome to The Daily.

Thanks so much for having us.

Rachel Poser, first time on the Daily.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Great to be here.

So we have talked a lot on the show about all of these dramatic ways that the Trump administration has reshaped the role and the function of the federal government. A lot of those results are quite visible. ICE agents in the streets. Prosecutors

define court orders. But one of the agencies that has been reshaped in perhaps less visible ways

is the FBI. The two of you embarked on an enormous, ambitious reporting project to try to really get inside the FBI.

So tell us what specifically you were trying to understand about the agency and how it was

functioning under the Trump administration. The FBI, you know, since the scandals of Watergate,

since those days, has really tried to operate independently of the

White House and to follow the facts without fear or favor. That's a big deal in the Bureau.

And so when Trump was elected, he had a record of calling the Bureau corrupt of being very angry

that he had been investigated. Well, I think the FBI was a very corrupt institution, and I'm a victim of it in a true sense.

I was able to beat it.

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