FBI: The Crusader Is Leaving, the Crusade Remains

Andrew Bailey, one of the FBI's 2 deputy directors, is leaving the bureau at the end of the week. After just over a year, officially to spend more time with his family, announced in a short post online. His departure is disappointing his allies on the far right, because Bailey was their man for the hardest fight of all, the one against the abortion pill.

How far that fight took him can be seen in his time as Missouri attorney general. In 2024, he tried to stop a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights by arguing that aborted "unborn Missourians" would shrink the state's future tax base. In a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration, he seriously claimed that access to abortion pills through telehealth lowers the birth rate among teenage mothers and ultimately costs the state political representation and federal funding. Even a rival called it simply insane. In Trump's party, that kind of reasoning has long since stopped being an obstacle to a career.

In the summer of 2025, that was exactly what made him co-deputy director of the FBI, with enormous power over how the bureau operated. That included possible investigations into anyone who supports or performs abortions, and into the women who obtain them. A zealot was handed the investigative machinery of an entire country. Dan Bongino had previously held the post alone and, it seemed, needed supervision. After his departure in the winter, career agent Christopher Raia moved in alongside Bailey. The federal government has been gearing up for this for some time. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the administration would review its position on the Comstock Act, a 19th-century morality law aimed at "obscene" material sent through the mail. The law lay dormant for a long time, but it was never repealed, and abortion opponents, all the way up to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, consider it still in force. Bailey's lawsuit against the FDA had already relied on it, and he also warned the CVS and Walgreens chains against dispensing such medication.

Also read our earlier report: Andrew Bailey – Anatomy of an American Tragedy and the Collapse of the Last Remnants of Democracy

FBI Director Kash Patel has shown himself open to criminal prosecution. During a hearing on September 15, Senator Josh Hawley claimed that manufacturers were showing women how to use the mail to get around state bans. Patel replied that any use of the federal mail system "is a federal crime that falls to the FBI," and "we are committed to that." A sentence that sends a colder chill through doctors and patients than any open threat. Back in March, Republican senators were already pressing the FDA to work with law enforcement against the mailing of the pills.

The real reason for the departure sounds less like family. According to reports, Bailey was angry about the demotion of 2 senior counterterrorism agents in the Washington field office, allegedly punished for how they assessed a threat involving harassing phone calls to Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser. Then there was the slight of not being made director himself after Patel's missteps. We have heard the family excuse for leaving often enough, the second reason is usually sitting right next to it.

Read our article on this: Two FBI counterterrorism agents raise legal questions - shortly afterward they are demoted

Bailey remained largely invisible in public, with one exception. In January, he personally oversaw the raid on the Fulton County election office in Georgia, the place at the center of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Bailey, himself a spreader of the election fraud fairy tale, stood there alongside then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. 2 Democratic senators called the appearance unprecedented.

His road there was one long declaration of war. As attorney general, he demanded the unredacted medical records of transgender minors, an approach Trump's Justice Department copied in 2025. He went to court against approval of the abortion pill and accused a clinic of "transporting" minors for abortions, based on a staged undercover video from a far-right group. When Missouri voters overturned the state's abortion ban by 52 to 48 percent, he kept suing to preserve the restrictions. He issued an emergency rule against gender-affirming treatment for people of all ages and only withdrew it later. In the end, he sued the national headquarters of Planned Parenthood over allegedly misleading advertising because it described the abortion pill as safer than a common painkiller. Internal documents show that some of his strategies came directly from abortion opponents, from Missouri Right to Life to the Heritage Foundation. According to the FBI, Bailey has devoted his entire career to protecting the Constitution.

His loyalty to the cause went beyond abortion. He won a "historic" $24 billion default judgment against the People's Republic of China over alleged responsibility for the pandemic, a legally useless case he inherited from his predecessor. Beijing is now suing for $50 billion in return. For the attorney general job, Trump considered Bailey "too laid-back," and he lost out first to Matt Gaetz and then to Pam Bondi.

His departure changes nothing about the direction. "Under President Trump, we delivered historic results," Bailey wrote as he left, and Patel thanked him for "important reforms" that would "live on." Bailey's exit comes in the middle of a major personnel drain at the top of the FBI, just as he had been helping oversee election matters ahead of the midterms. New hard-liners are already moving in, at the Justice Department and at the top of the FDA. Nobody expects the big move before the midterms. After that, every boundary is open.