CBS News reports: At the FBI, a history of hiring prostitutes or stealing from employer may no longer be a barrier to being hired.
The FBI previously refused to hire job applicants if they admitted to hiring sex workers or stealing from an employer — or engaging in acts of bestiality.
Today, those acts, which are mostly illegal across the country, are no longer automatic deal breakers for applicants to the nation’s top law enforcement agency.
In June, the FBI quietly lowered some of the standards it uses when it conducts background checks on would-be federal agents and other personnel. According to multiple sources briefed on the matter, the FBI did so to facilitate hiring in some cases, even if candidates acknowledged they engaged in sexually deviant activities or stole from an employer.
I will confess to never having given any of this any thought, but will admit that maybe these were reasonable filters.
And, of course, the question of why this is happening springs to mind.
The move comes as the FBI has lost scores of employees through firings, retirements and resignations since the start of the Trump administration.
Ah.
So, maybe coming in like a bull in a china shop and purging dedicated law enforcement officials was a bad idea?
Three additional thoughts spring to mind:
- What does it say about the Trump administration that to fill slots they need to relax the rules on theft, prostitution, and bestiality?
- Fox News and the right-wing media sphere would have lost their minds with wall-to-wall coverage of this if it had been done by a Democratic administration.
- We keep being told that Democrats are a bunch of dangerous pedophiles and deviants, but every time we get much in the way of concrete information in this realm, it is pointed squarely at this administration. I mean, someone they want to hire has to have committed bestiality, yes? After all, why bring it up otherwise?
The ongoing corruption of our system by these people is breathtaking.
I mean, this makes you feel good about these potential hire, doesn’t it?
Under the new eligibility rules, a person who stole from an employer is not automatically disqualified as long as the incident occurred more than three years ago, one of the sources with direct knowledge said.
The new standards also specifically address applicants who have engaged in past acts of bestiality or animal cruelty – saying they may still be considered for the bureau as long as the incidents took place before the age of 18, the sources said.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed that some changes to the eligibility requirements have taken place, but claimed they are limited to a narrow set of circumstances, such as in cases where a person was sexually abused with animals as a child.
By the way, I will readily allow the limitations of polygraph tests, and wonder about their efficacy in making these decisions. Still, there is a reason that these specific issues have been changed.
Former FBI agents and attorneys who handle employment issues for agents told CBS News the decision to lower the standards could lead the bureau to hire people with a history of aberrant behavior and points to broader challenges in recruiting qualified applicants.
“If they are lowering standards, it means the pool of candidates has sufficiently shrunk,” Davidson said.
Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who represents FBI agents and is familiar with the bureau’s hiring practices, agreed.
“How can this not be reflective of a recruiting problem at the FBI if you are lowering your standards on issues like bestiality and prostitution,” he said.
Only the best, dontcha know.
