FBI Recruit­ing Soars As Patel Takes Con­trol

In the first full month after Kash Patel was con­firmed as FBI direc­tor on Feb­ru­ary 20, the FBI received a record num­ber of new agent appli­ca­tions.

5,577 new appli­ca­tions were filed in March, after 2023 saw a month­ly aver­age of 2,797 appli­ca­tions, and 2024’s month­ly aver­age was 3,383. The most recent month that saw a num­ber approx­i­mat­ing March was April 2016, when  5,283 appli­ca­tions were filed, Fox News report­ed.

“Direc­tor Patel and Deputy Direc­tor Bongi­no have put a major empha­sis on restor­ing con­fi­dence in fed­er­al law enforce­ment and boost­ing new agent recruit­ing,” FBI spokesman Ben Williamson told Fox News Dig­i­tal. “These record ear­ly returns cer­tain­ly sug­gest the new FBI is head­ing in the right direc­tion.”

“The record num­ber of FBI job appli­ca­tions in March shows that peo­ple are inspired by Kash Patel’s com­mit­ment to restor­ing integri­ty and effec­tive­ness at the bureau,” Patel advi­sor Eri­ca Knight added. “Amer­i­cans are putting their trust in his lead­er­ship to rebuild the FBI and keep our com­mu­ni­ties safe. … this is just the begin­ning. Kash is ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing a stronger, more trust­ed FBI that serves the Amer­i­can peo­ple the way it was always meant to,” Knight said.

In May 2024, Rep. Jim Jor­dan (R‑OH) sent a let­ter to the FBI regard­ing its empha­sis on DEI in hir­ing and the recruit­ing fall­out from it. He stat­ed:

On Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, Pres­i­dent Biden issued his first Exec­u­tive Order pro­mul­gat­ing DEI pro­grams with­in the whole of Exec­u­tive Branch. A few months lat­er, on April 21, 2021, you announced the hir­ing of the FBI’s first Chief Diver­si­ty Offi­cer, Scott McMil­lon. From that time for­ward, we under­stand that the FBI has strug­gled with attract­ing enough qual­i­fied appli­cants from all desired tar­get groups to sus­tain its mis­sion. This is like­ly due to the FBI re-focus­ing its recruit­ment efforts on DEI sta­tis­tics. 

In Octo­ber 2023, a group of retired FBI Spe­cial Agents and Ana­lysts, many of whom held senior posi­tions of trust and author­i­ty with­in the FBI, authored a report detail­ing ‘alarm­ing trends’ in the FBI’s recruit­ment and selec­tion process. The detailed, 112-page report high­light­ed sev­er­al trou­bling find­ings, includ­ing that: “The law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties of the FBI are degrad­ing because the FBI is no longer hir­ing ‘the best and bright­est’ can­di­dates to fill the posi­tion of Spe­cial Agent of the FBI. … An increas­ing num­ber of low­er qual­i­ty can­di­dates — described by one source as ‘bread crumbs’ because they were reject­ed by oth­er fed­er­al law enforce­ment agen­cies — are apply­ing to become FBI Spe­cial Agents; and the FBI is select­ing those can­di­dates to become FBI Spe­cial Agents because they sat­is­fy the FBI’s pri­or­i­ty to meet Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty and Inclu­sion (DEI) man­dates …  The FBI’s Spe­cial Agent hir­ing num­bers are down, like­ly due to the decline in the Nation’s trust in the FBI and a cor­re­spond­ing decrease in the num­ber of indi­vid­u­als inter­est­ed in apply­ing to the FBI for employ­ment.”