Inside the bitter personal battle between top FBI and DOJ officials over Mar-a-Lago

This article is adapted from the book “Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War on Democracy,” by NBC News’ national security editor.

On Aug. 1, 2022, senior Justice Department andFBI officials gathered on the seventh floor of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a historic meeting.

They exchanged pleasantries, shook hands, and took seats in Room 7427, the FBI general counsel’s conference room, a nondescript gathering place with a long rectangular table surrounded by no-frills office chairs. Each official wore a suit, mandatory attire on the storied floor that houses the office of the FBI director and his top advisers.

The senior DOJ officials had left their headquarters, an elegant mix of Classical and Art Deco architecture, and met their bureau colleagues across Pennsylvania Avenue in the FBI headquarters, a Brutalist structure considered one of the ugliest buildings in Washington. Their goal was to have what one participant later called a “come to Jesus” meeting.

For months, prosecutors from the DOJ’s national security division and the leaders of the FBI’s Washington field office had disagreed over an ongoing criminal probe. Tension and debate between prosecutors and agents during an investigation are routine, and often welcomed.

But this case had taken on an extraordinary level of intensity, pressure, and acrimony due to the potential defendant: former President Donald Trump.

Career officials from the FBI Washington field office eventually took an unusual step. They privately questioned a career DOJ prosecutor's political donations to Democrats and what they saw as his aggressive stance toward Trump.

In both the FBI and DOJ, career officials, unlike political appointees, are