Trump's FBI Removed Two of Its Senior Counterterrorism Leaders — the Head of Counterterrorism at the Washington Field Office and His Deputy — Not for Failing to Stop a Threat, but for Declining to Keep Investigating Allegedly Harassing Phone Calls to Katie Miller, the Podcaster Wife of Top White House Adviser Stephen Miller, After Agents Judged the Calls Did Not Warrant It
In September 2026, the FBI under Kash Patel ousted two of its senior counterterrorism officials — Michael Burgwald, the special agent in charge of counterterrorism at the Washington Field Office, and his deputy, Courtland Rae — after their team determined that allegedly harassing phone calls received by Katie Miller did not warrant further investigation. Katie Miller is a conservative podcaster and the wife of Stephen Miller, one of the most powerful advisers in the Trump White House. The agents' professional assessment — that the calls were not the kind of threat that merited a continued federal investigation — reportedly angered FBI leadership, and the two men were removed from their posts. (Burgwald already had a strained relationship with Patel; a senior executive overseeing the D.C. office confirmed the ousting but denied the order came from Patel personally.) Strip the names out and the principle is alarming: FBI leaders were punished not for a failure of security but for exercising independent judgment in a matter touching a politically connected family. It is the inverse of how a professional law-enforcement agency is supposed to work. The message to every agent is that the correct amount of investigation is however much the connected complainant wants — and that declining, on the merits, is a career-ending mistake when the complainant is close to power.