Two Trump allies are getting a brutal dose of reality from the far right: analysis
The FBI has been "hemorrhaging" some of its most experienced and valuable agents amid President Donald Trump's chaotic and messy return to the White House, with an MS NOW report revealing the development as the bureau's director has been caught inflating arrest numbers.
On Thursday, MS NOW's Ana Cabrera hosted a segment delving into the outlet's recent revelations about FBI Director Kash Patel using sneaky methods to inflate the data pertaining to the bureau's success. Ken Dilanian, the reporter who broke the story, explained that Patel's recent boast about the FBI arresting twice as many violent felons in 2025 compared to when Joe Biden was president in 2024 was the result of a change in policy about what sorts of arrests are included in the statistics.
"What that doesn'texplain is that Kash Patelchanged the policy so that theFBI began, in 2025, countingarrests where FBI agents werepresent," Dilanian explained. "But other agenciesmade the arrests and led theinvestigation, whether otherfederal agencies or state andlocal agencies, including theimmigration raids that Patelhas been requiring FBI agents to go on. So these stats do notreflect additional suspectsbeing taken off the streets, iswhat our sources are telling us."
Dilanian also deflated Patel's claims about the FBI getting better at arresting targets on its most wanted list, explaining that he has essentially been "gaming the system" by having fugitives added to the list when it is understood that they are soon to be captured anyway.
Amid this leadership mess, Dilanian revealed that the bureau saw its attrition rate skyrocket in 2025, losing some of its most valuable agents to the private sector. He also noted that this is an issue that cannot be resolved quickly, leaving the FBI in an prolonged quagmire of its own making.
"There's been ahemorrhaging of experiencedagents," Dilanian said. "Sothere are around 13,000 specialagents out of the FBI workforceof around 38,000. And generally,there's been around a 5 percentattrition rate, so around 700agents a year. But in 2025, thebureau lost 2800 agents,according to internal FBIstatistics. "
He added later: "And that mayactually understate the extentof the damage here, becausethey are some of the mostexperienced agents and some ofthe most senior agents who haveleft. And it's continuing tohappen. And it's a huge problemthat is not fixable in a fewyears or with the nextpresidency, because thosepeople are gone. They're in theprivate sector, and it takesmany, many years to trainpeople as good as... [these] special agents who have left the FBI."