DOJ will not fire FBI agents that acted ethically over January 6 cases
Multiple FBI Agents Sustained by a Bove Communication with Jan. 6 Investigations: Sensitivities to President Donald Trump, the FBI, and their Families
FBI agents filed two separate lawsuits in federal court in Washington, D.C., against the Justice Department, seeking to block it from making public any list of FBI employees or their personal information.
The person said that the FBI gave an employee ID number instead of names, which was because they weren’t authorized to discuss personnel matters.
The information is part of an effort by the FBI and Department of Justice to push out those considered disloyal to President Trump. The Justice Department brought criminal cases against Trump over the past couple of years but they were dropped after he won the election.
The FBI has been in turmoil since last week when Bove issued a memo, with the subject line, “Terminations,” that ordered the firing of eight senior FBI officials, and demanded the bureau identify all current and former FBI personnel who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
The FBI agents association and anonymous agents filed one of the lawsuits that claimed that most of the bureau’s nearly 15,000 agents are members. The other suit was filed anonymously by a group of nine FBI agents.
The FBI employees who investigated the defendants are concerned about potential retaliation by the defendants. Trump pardoned some 1,500 Capitol riot defendants, including individuals convicted of assaulting police.
“Plaintiffs assert that the purpose for this list is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment action,” one of the lawsuits states. “Plaintiffs reasonably fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons.”
In one of them, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison before being pardoned by Trump, has “openly expressed his intent to seek retaliation against the FBI,” the lawsuit says.
The memo states that the people who should be worried about are those who acted with corrupt intent, who blatantly disobeyed orders from Department leadership, or who used discretion to weaponize the FBI.
An FBI agent who followed their orders during investigations into the Capitol riot will not be terminated, according to a top Justice Department official.
