Top FBI agent in Charlotte retires as others who investigated Trump step down (2025)

Robert DeWitt, the head of the Charlotte FBI who previously led the FBI’s Miami office when federal agents raided then former-President Donald Trump’s Florida estate in 2022, told colleagues that he is retiring at the end of May.

DeWitt made the announcement in an email addressed to “friends and colleagues” on Thursday.

“We deal with a lot of darkness in our profession, and it’s important to take a break to focus on what is true, noble, just, and admirable,” DeWitt wrote in the email obtained by The Charlotte Observer and The News and Observer. “... thank you for your continued support and prayers to those currently upholding our constitution and keeping the country safe.”

DeWitt’s retirement news follows similar announcements from other high-ranking officials who investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and Trump’s handling of classified documents following his 2020 presidential loss. The Justice Department brought criminal charges against Trump that were dismissed after he won the 2024 election.

The president has described such investigations as the “weaponization” of the FBI and Justice Department. He appointed former federal prosecutor Kash Patel, a harsh FBI critic who pushed conspiracy theories and defended Jan. 6 rioters, to direct the federal agency and shake up its structure and duties.

Since Trump’s inauguration, hundreds of agents who worked on the Capitol riot and Trump investigations have recently faced scrutiny from the Justice Department.

Special agent in charge in Miami and Charlotte

From June 2022 to December 2022, DeWitt was the acting — or interim — special agent in charge in Miami. In August 2022, Washington D.C., agents raided Trump’s Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago, and Miami’s FBI office was “actively involved,” the Miami Herald reported.

When DeWitt became the special agent in charge of Charlotte’s FBI office in January 2023, his Miami successor, Jeffrey Veltri, continued to be involved in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation.

Veltri resigned in February after he “was given an ultimatum: retire, resign or be fired,” according to sources familiar with his resignation, the Miami Herald reported.

Top Charlotte FBI agent retires

DeWitt’s pending retirement will mark the end of a 22-year career at the FBI.

After graduating from Lindenwood University in Missouri, DeWitt served in the U.S. Army in southwest Asia. Then, in 2002, he started working as a federal agent in Washington, D.C., investigating counterterrorism and working on SWAT teams, according to a news release announcing DeWitt’s Charlotte job.

He led teams and offices in Iowa, Nebraska, Florida, North Carolina and Quantico, Virginia. Throughout his career, he’s supervised hostage rescue teams around the world and pioneered cyber crime task forces.

While the acting agent in charge in Miami, DeWitt sent an email to several federal agency officials about the “heightened threats against law enforcement following the FBI’s recent investigation actions in Palm Beach, Florida,” Judicial Watch reported.

In it, he wrote that people “adhering to different violent extremist ideologies have coalesced around perceptions of government overreach and election fraud to threaten and conduct violence ... the threats we have observed to date, underscore that (Domestic Violent Extremists) may view the 2022 elections as an additional flashpoint around which to escalate threats against perceived ideological opponents, including federal law enforcement personnel.”

This story was originally published April 25, 2025 at 7:07 PM.