Donald Trump’s political appointees at the justice department will consider in the coming weeks whether to purge a large number of FBI agents who worked on the criminal cases against the president and cases against rioters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
The move comes as the justice department on Friday also told FBI leadership that eight senior executives at the bureau – including those overseeing national security, cybersecurity and counter-terrorism – needed to be fired, unless they retired beforehand.
Just how how many rank-and-file agents could be affected remains unclear. But the criteria laid out in an email announcing the changes, sent by the FBI’s acting director, Brian Driscoll, suggested it could potentially lead to the removal of hundreds or thousands of agents.
The threat of summary terminations sent shockwaves through the FBI as agents confronted the reality that they could be fired for having been assigned to an investigation that angered the president.
Before he departed for Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, Trump denied he had ordered the firings of FBI agents but suggested he saw it as poetic justice. “No, but we have some very bad people there … I wasn’t involved in that. But if they want to fire some people, it is fine with me,” he said in the Oval Office.
In the email, Driscoll wrote he had been directed by the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, to provide a list of names by noon on 4 February of all current and former agents who had ever been assigned to investigate or prosecute January 6 attack cases.
“These lists should include relevant supervisory personnel in FBI regional offices and field divisions, as well as at FBI headquarters,” the email said. “Upon timely receipt of the requested information, the office of the deputy attorney general will commence a review.”
If the justice department follows through, it would mark a seismic moment for the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, which has no political appointees other than the FBI director, and eviscerate civil service protections for career officials.
It would also contradict public statements from Trump’s FBI director nominee Kash Patel, who said under oath at his confirmation hearing he would follow established bureau policy for terminations and transfers.
Patel’s nomination is pending in the Senate. Until he is confirmed to the role, Driscoll is serving as the acting director and Robert Kissane, a top counter-terrorism agent in New York, is serving as the acting deputy director.
The turmoil at the FBI comes as the justice department itself has faced a turbulent two weeks, after scores of senior non-political officials and career prosecutors who worked on the Trump criminal cases were dismissed at the direction of the White House.
The termination notices sent to the prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team explained they were being let go as a result of their “significant role in prosecuting President Trump”, which meant they could not be trusted to “assist in faithfully implementing the president’s agenda”.
