Shutters specialized FBI team

Trump's Justice Department shutters specialized FBI team combating foreign election interference threats

From CNN's Josh Campbell

The FBI is preparing to disband a team of specialists charged with combating foreign threats to US elections, a source familiar tells CNN.

The shuttering of the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force and planned reassigning of team members follows a directive from incoming and newly sworn in US Attorney General Pam Bondi dissolving the team.

“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion, the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded,” Bondi wrote in a memo issued Wednesday.

The special task force was established by former FBI Director Christopher Wray in 2017 following a wave of foreign influence operations targeting the US electoral process, including Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election that Trump won.

Wray previously said the purpose of the team was “to identify and counteract the full range of malign foreign influence operations targeting our democratic institutions and our values. The task force now brings together the FBI’s expertise across the waterfront — counterintelligence, cyber, criminal, and even counterterrorism — to root out and respond to foreign influence operations.”