This story originally appeared in The Washington Post 1-31-2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/31/fbi-considering-mass-purge-agents-involved-trump-investigations/?utm_source=pocket_saves

Justice Department orders FBI purge, review of staff who touched Jan. 6 cases

Leaders appointed by the Trump administration are identifying potentially hundreds of FBI agents for possible termination, said people familiar with the plan.

Updated January 31, 2025

By Jeremy Roebuck, Perry Stein, Salvador Rizzo, and Carol D. Leonnig

A top Justice Department official on Friday ordered the firing of at least eight senior FBI executives and a sweeping examination of the work of thousands of other bureau employees, including all those who worked on investigations tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.

The directive from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said those field agents and FBI support staff could face “additional personnel action,” suggesting that the number of firings could swell in the coming weeks.

Bove instructed Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll to terminate the eight executives he identified — including David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office, which was heavily involved in the Capitol riot investigation — if they did not agree to resign within days. He cited an executive order President Donald Trump signed within hours of taking office last week, ordering an end to what he described as the “weaponization’ of law enforcement.”

“I do not believe the current leadership of the Justice Department can trust these FBI employees to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully,” Bove wrote.

The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment. The Post reported on Thursday that multiple senior FBI officials had been ordered to leave the bureau within days or be fired, and it was unclear how many of those individuals were among those named in Bove’s directive.

The information contained in the directive adds new detail to a potential staffing shake-up described earlier Friday by three people familiar with those plans. The possible personnel moves come just days after pledges to avoid retaliatory action by Trump’s nominees to lead the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private personnel deliberations, said Justice Department officials were also reviewing the records — and considering firing — dozens of other field agents who had been involved in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

In an email to the FBI’s workforce later Friday evening, Driscoll wrote that he had been instructed to dismiss eight executives and acknowledged the wider review processes underway “to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”

“This request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts,” Driscoll wrote, noting that he and Robert Kissane, the FBI’s acting deputy director, were among them. The email was obtained by The Post.

It is highly unusual for senior staffing changes to be made under interim leadership at the FBI, a law enforcement agency that is supposed to be insulated from politics. A mass purge of field agents, the front line investigators in FBI cases, would signal an even greater escalation of a pattern of upheaval that has roiled the Justice Department.

Bove was appointed to the position of acting deputy attorney general last week, after serving as one of the president’s personal defense attorneys in some of the cases he has now flagged for review. Trump’s nominee to fill that position permanently — Todd Blanche, another member of his personal legal team — awaits Senate confirmation. After that, Bove will be the principal associate deputy attorney general, one of the most powerful positions at the Justice Department.

In addition to those involved in the Jan. 6 and Trump cases, Bove’s memo sought information on agents assigned to the February 2024 case the Justice Department brought in Manhattan against Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader prosecutors accused of involvement in the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel. It was not immediately clear why FBI personnel involved in that investigation were now under scrutiny.

Driscoll, a longtime agent whom Trump appointed to run the bureau until a permanent director is confirmed, has refused to endorse any effort to purge agents, the people familiar with the matter said.

In his email to staff on Friday, he wrote, “As we’ve said since the moment we agreed to take on these roles, we are going to follow the law, follow FBI policy, and do what’s in the best interest of the workforce and the American people — always.”

Asked Friday in the Oval Office whether he had ordered the firings of FBI agents, Trump said: “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.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) — the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which provides oversight to both the Justice Department and the FBI — called the possible looming purge “a major blow” to the integrity and effectiveness of both agencies and “a brazen assault on the rule of law.”

“Unelected Trump lackeys are carrying out widespread political retribution against our nation’s career law enforcement officials,” he said in a statement. “President Trump would rather have the FBI and DOJ full of blind admirers and loyalists than experienced law enforcement officers.”

Any purge of scores of agents from field offices across the country could significantly deplete the bureau’s staffing levels, affect ongoing cases unrelated to Trump or Jan. 6 and create a vacuum that would be difficult to quickly fill. New agents undergo intensive screening and a specialized 18-week training program before they can be deployed in the field.

While FBI agents can be terminated for cause, there is typically an extensive disciplinary process before any such decision.

Mark Zaid, a veteran attorney specializing in federal employment law, said FBI employees are entitled to receive a proposed punishment or discipline action in writing, and also a written justification outlining the security rules or standards of employee conduct they are accused of violating. The employee would then have a two-stage opportunity to appeal a recommended firing or other punishment.

Zaid said any mass dismissal of agents would be legally risky for the Trump administration, which has already fired prosecutors involved in the Trump cases and told multiple senior leaders at the FBI to retire or resign by Monday or face firing.

“What this administration is doing is, they are acting so recklessly and with disregard to any laws or norms, they are making a ton of errors to satisfy their outspoken base that seek retribution,” Zaid said. “And they are creating a lot of legal claims.”

During his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, FBI director nominee Kash Patel vowed not to take action against bureau employees simply because they’d worked on investigations tied to the president.

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” said Patel, who before being nominated had been an outspoken critic of the FBI and the Trump investigations.

Under questioning from U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Patel committed to following standard bureau review processes before disciplining or dismissing any agent. Booker also pressed Patel for a promise to reverse any dismissals that might occur before he could become FBI director, to ensure those procedures were followed. Patel did not explicitly make that commitment in his response.

“I don’t know what’s going on right now over there,” Patel told him. “But I’m committing to you, senator, and your colleagues that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI.”

Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, gave similar assurances regarding Justice Department employees during her hearing earlier this month.

“There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice,” she told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I will not politicize that office. I will not target people simply because of their political affiliation.”

Last week, however, interim leadership installed at the Justice Department while Bondi awaits confirmation fired more than a dozen officials and prosecutors who had worked on Smith’s cases. And The Washington Post reported Friday that interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin has dismissed about 30 federal prosecutors who worked on cases against participants in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol over the past four years.

The FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit advocacy group that represents FBI personnel, said the plan for firings, if true, would be “fundamentally at odds” with Trump’s law enforcement objectives.

The group said it had received assurances from Patel that agents would not face retribution based on the cases to which they were assigned.

“Dismissing potentially hundreds of agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure,” the association said in a statement.

The agents assigned to the Trump election interference investigation, for instance, did not volunteer to be put on the case, but were assigned by top FBI officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation who asked to remain anonymous to discuss a sensitive matter. The person said this assignment process was intended to ensure the investigative team was not politically biased.

As news of possible firings spread Friday, bureau employees traded information and some sought legal advice.

One person who works at the FBI’s Washington Field Office relayed to a colleague that supervisors had told agents to prepare for the White House to publicly release the names of the agents who worked on the two Trump criminal cases on Monday, and that those agents would to be terminated that same day.

Managers were telling employees to take their personnel files with them over the weekend, another person who was contacted by someone who works for the FBI said.

Lisa Rein, Derek Hawkins and Mark Berman contributed to this report.

Earlier versions of this article incorrectly described the title Emil Bove will hold at the Justice Department once a deputy attorney general is confirmed by the Senate. Bove, who is the acting deputy attorney general, will become the principal associate deputy attorney general. The article has been corrected.