The ongoing government shutdown is starting to hamper sensitive FBI investigations because agents are unable to pay informants, according to two sources familiar with internal discussions on the matter.
It’s yet another consequence of the congressional standoff between Republicans and Democrats as the shutdown enters its third week.
An estimated 750,000 federal employees have been furloughed, and the Trump Administration has begun to lay off thousands of government workers. But much of the Justice Department keeps working without pay, given that law enforcement work is often deemed essential.
President Donald Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel have scheduled a Wednesday afternoon press conference and are expected to announce plans to reallocate existing federal money to pay FBI agents — without congressional approval — two sources told NOTUS. But investigators’ bigger concern is their inability to pay insiders who’ve been recruited to divulge sensitive information on criminal activities.
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The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
FBI special agents are required to get a supervisor’s approval to pay sources who are embedded in biker gangs, drug cartels and terrorist groups who then receive money as a condition of their cooperation with ongoing investigations. However, one source said agents are being told “don’t even submit it because it’s not going to be approved.”
“This is awful. Sources and local law enforcement partnerships are where the FBI makes such an impact. Both are the eyes and ears. And it’s no secret, locals work with us because we have money to pay sources,” said one person, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
A former FBI agent, who was not aware of the freeze on informant payments, told NOTUS that the bureau usually keeps a “small cash reserve” for emergencies but that it wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to cover the routine payments agents make to those the DOJ classifies as “confidential human informants” who share details about criminal organizations monitored by the law enforcement agency.
A second source familiar with the informant cash crunch pointed out that the freeze on payments is also affecting other key elements of investigations because the bureau is unable to pay translators and other staffers who assist agents as they communicate with sources and examine evidence.
Most of the Justice Department continues to be operational, albeit with a distracted workforce, as employees received their last paychecks for the foreseeable future last Friday. According to the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, an estimated 97,000 Justice Department employees are working without pay, and 13,000 were sent home on furlough. Only 5,000 or so continue to work with pay.
The FBI Agents Association, which represents those currently employed at the bureau, sounded a similar alarm when the first Trump administration oversaw the nation’s longest-ever government shutdown, which stretched on for 35 days in late 2018 and early 2019. Five weeks into that shutdown, the FBIAA released a report documenting the many ways the freeze on funding impacted investigations beyond agents’ control: delaying forensic interviews of child victims of sexual assault and holding back grand jury indictments because investigators couldn’t get furloughed attorneys to subpoena medical records from hospitals.
Back then, the FBIAA quoted one agent who claimed that they were unable to pay for drugs or firearms for sting operations and another agent who complained that they couldn’t obtain a linguist to conduct a three-way call with an informant for a three-year investigation into the MS-13 street gang.
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