Two senior FBI counterterrorism officials have been abruptly reassigned from the Washington Field Office after their team concluded that a series of harassing calls to Katie Miller, wife of senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, did not justify a full federal investigation.
According to Gateway Pundit, Michael Burgwald, the special agent in charge of counterterrorism at the Washington Field Office, and his deputy, Courtland Rae, were stripped of their posts on Friday and dispatched to FBI headquarters. Bloomberg Law reporter Ben Penn first disclosed the shake-up in a post on X, highlighting growing concern over politicization inside the bureau.
Anonymous sources told CNN the field team examined calls Katie Miller received from unknown numbers, found no terrorism nexus, and determined the behavior did not meet the FBIs threshold for a full probe. Those same sources claimed that conclusion did not sit well with bureau leadership, raising questions about whether senior officials were seeking a more aggressive posture in a case involving a prominent Trump administration figure.
MS NOW reported that Burgwald and Rae challenged the legality of a threat-assessment request targeting a person believed to be behind the calls, and that Stephen Miller and FBI Director Kash Patel were dissatisfied with the pace of the inquiry. However, FBIs D.C. chief Darren Cox told Penn, Director Patel did not order this decision. This was a personnel decision made at the Washington field office level alone based on our constant evaluation of mission needs. Any suggestion otherwise is false.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Bloomberg that Stephen and Katie Miller never met Burgwald or Rae, distancing the Millers from any internal personnel maneuvering. Senior leadership at the FBI determined they were stifling investigations into very serious threats and made a unilateral decision to remove them.
Last year, after flyers attacking Stephen Miller appeared in their neighborhood, the couple pressed authorities for a stronger response and ultimately moved with their children into military housing, underscoring the climate of hostility surrounding conservatives who served under President Donald Trump.
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