The Washington Post
February 9, 2025
Trump supporters scaled the walls on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol before gaining access to the building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
By Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel
Candidates for top national security positions in the Trump administration have faced questions that appear designed to determine whether they have embraced the president’s false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election and its aftermath, according to people familiar with cases of such screening.
The questions asked of several current and former officials up for top intelligence agency and law enforcement posts revolved around two events that have become President Donald Trump’s litmus test to distinguish friend from foe: the result of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
These people said that two individuals, both former officials who were being considered for positions within the intelligence community, were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to the questions: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?” And was the 2020 presidential election “stolen?”
These individuals, who did not give the desired straight “yes” answers, were not selected. It is not clear whether other factors contributed to the decision.
The questions were posed in direct interviews conducted by personnel hiring for the new administration.
One former official familiar with the questions posed to one of the candidates said: “He was not willing to compromise his integrity by saying things he knew weren’t true. He’s not losing any sleep over his decision.”
Political fealty has been a prerequisite for positions at all levels of the new administration, including for current civil servants seeking new assignments. But former national security and other officials said it is especially important for the nation’s security that intelligence professionals be able to give the president accurate information, even if it does not align with his policy or political preferences.
“It’s normal for a new administration to ask potential political appointees about their political views to assure that they align with the new administration,” said John Bellinger III, who served as the senior counsel for the White House National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. “And it’s appropriate for a new administration to ask career officials if they are comfortable carrying out the new administration’s policies. But it’s not appropriate to condition jobs, especially in the intelligence and law enforcement community, on partisan political stances. We want career officials to interpret intelligence and enforce the laws in a neutral way without any partisan preference.”
Separately, at least two individuals in FBI field offices outside Washington, who were being interviewed for senior positions, were asked similar questions, said one U.S. official familiar with the incidents. The questions included: Who were the “real patriots” on Jan. 6? Who won the 2020 election? Who is your “real boss?”
These agents have yet to hear the outcome of their interviews, according to the official.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said in a letter last week to the acting FBI director, Brian Driscoll, that he received “credible information” that a “loyalty test is being implemented in the leadership hiring process, with candidates being asked about the 2020 election and January 6, 2021.”
In a statement to The Washington Post, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said: “It is entirely appropriate that candidates for national security positions in the Trump administration align with President Trump’s agenda to put America First.”
Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election and asserted that thousands of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were patriots. Some right-wing voices have suggested the insurrection was an “inside job” organized by the FBI.
The loyalty questions come amid an already tense atmosphere at the bureau and in the intelligence community. In recent days, interim Justice Department leaders appointed by Trump ordered the FBI to hand over a list of the thousands of personnel across the country who worked on Jan. 6. cases, forced out senior FBI leaders and transferred several senior Justice Department officials, and fired prosecutors involved in a special counsel investigation of Trump.
There have been no such actions at the CIA, National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, though their civilian workforces have been offered buyouts. But personnel there are warily watching the actions of CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the statements of director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard. Both are political allies of Trump, and Gabbard has at times suggested intelligence officials are part of a disloyal deep state.
Ratcliffe and Gabbard pledged during their confirmation hearings not to politicize their agencies. “As the president’s principal intelligence adviser, I will begin with leading by example, checking my own views at the door, and committing to delivering intelligence that is collected, analyzed, and reported without bias, prejudice or political influence,” Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats asked Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, at his Jan. 30 confirmation hearing about plans for agents who had worked on Jan. 6 cases, and he pledged no retribution, even as the removals of senior FBI officials were already underway.
Asked to comment on the loyalty questions, an FBI spokeswoman declined. An FBI official said: “We have no knowledge of that.”
One former senior intelligence official said that attesting to something you know to be untrue — as in the assertion that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election — would violate the ethos of an intelligence officer.
“I don’t understand how somebody could [answer untruthfully] and do their job,” said the former official.
By design, spy agencies have relatively few political appointees, and veteran intelligence officials say their role is to provide policymakers, no matter from which party, intelligence untainted by political considerations.
There have been loyalty investigations of federal employees over the years, such as during the communist “witch hunts” of the McCarthy era, noted Yale University historian Beverly Gage. Those were problematic in their own right, Gage said, “but at least they were not about whether or not you’re loyal to a particular politician, but whether you’re loyal to the country.”
The only time the country came close to being led by a president who insisted on personal and partisan loyalty within the intelligence agencies was during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, said Gage, author of a major biography of the first FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover.
Nixon “wanted to take all of these big government agencies and make them responsive to the White House, make them loyal to him in part, because he, like Trump, had this sense that the media and all the Democrats and the bureaucracy were arrayed against him,” she said.
Recent polls indicate that perceptions of the intelligence community, and particularly the FBI, are highly polarized, following years of attacks by Trump and his allies.
“There’s been a historical reversal,” said Jeffrey Rogg, an intelligence historian at the University of South Florida. “Whereas Democrats historically were suspicious of the FBI and intelligence organizations, now it’s Republicans who are. And it’s not accidental that it’s due to political events in the United States and the perception that intelligence organizations have taken sides.”
The politically tinged loyalty questions are just one aspect of a broader screening campaign that includes reviewing candidates’ and current officials’ social media posts for any divergence from Trump’s views, and checking on past campaign donations and political activity.
The application form for jobs in the Trump administration asks if applicants supported Trump in the 2024 election, and “What part of President Trump’s campaign message is most appealing to you and why?” according to the Associated Press.
Some longtime intelligence professionals say that Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk’s drive to downsize and remake the government is not without merit. There are organizations within the intelligence community that need streamlining and mission priorities that should be reset, they said.
The Trump administration and Senate Republicans have signaled they want the CIA to be more aggressive with human intelligence gathering and to downsize the ODNI, which was formed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to better coordinate spy agencies. It now has more than 2,000 employees.
Isaac Stanley-Becker, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.
Ellen Nakashima is an intelligence and national security reporter at The Washington Post. She's been a member of three Pulitzer prizewinning teams, for probing the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the hidden scope of government surveillance. Send her secure tips on Signal at Ellen.626
Warren P. Strobel is a reporter at The Washington Post covering U.S. intelligence. He has written about U.S. security policies under seven presidents. He received numerous awards, and was portrayed in the movie "Shock and Awe," for his skeptical reporting on the decision to invade Iraq. Send him secure tips on Signal at 202 744 1312
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