As it happens, the FBI’s new employee handbook has an “it’s complicated” section. Kash Patel’s bureau quietly rewrote its hiring standards in June, and the fine print reads less like a background check and more like a statute-of-limitations chart for bad behavior, as first reported by CBS News.
And it’s wild: Certain past misdeeds that used to be automatic disqualifiers are now just negotiable. Well, that depends on timing and circumstance.
Hired a sex worker? No biggie, as long as it happened more than a decade ago, fewer than three times, and you’re not applying for a job that requires actual trust — public safety, health care, finance, law, education. (The military, weirdly, gets a pass on that trust clause. Make of that what you will.)
Stole from a former employer? Also forgivable, provided it’s been three-plus years since your thieving hands helped you into the till. And if bestiality or animal cruelty is on your résumé, the bureau will look the other way — but only if you were still a minor when it happened, which is its own special kind of “well, at least there’s a cutoff.” Whew!
The changes went out via an internal memo to vetting staff on June 16. The bureau’s official line is that this isn’t lowering the bar; it’s just giving hiring managers “flexibility” — because maybe that solicitation happened somewhere prostitution is legal, or maybe an applicant was themselves a victim of animal-related sexual abuse. Nuance!
When the AP came knocking, the FBI insisted, essentially, “we would never” — “criminal sexual acts” are still disqualifying, they swear, pinky promise, and their vetting process remains “wide-ranging and extensive” with “some of the highest suitability standards” in government.
“It is false to suggest criminal behavior like this is no longer disqualifying at the FBI. Any applicant who has engaged in criminal sexual acts like those referenced would of course not be eligible for employment, and it is ridiculous to suggest otherwise,” the FBI said in a statement that alleges the background check process as “wide-ranging and extensive,” the Associated Press reports.
“The FBI has and always will maintain some of the highest suitability standards for its applicants and employees in the US Government,” the statement added.
Context as to why any of this happened: the bureau bled 1,139 special agents in 2025 alone and is now running with roughly 13,700 total — a staffing hole Patel has blamed partly on hiring rules he considers to be too strict.
So, the short version: the FBI can’t keep agents, so it’s quietly loosening the screening on the ones coming through the door due to an exodus at the bureau—nothing to see here, just standard workplace flexibility.