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The Trump administration is set to expand a purge of career law enforcement officials, demanding the names of those who worked on January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack and Trump-related investigations for potential removal – a move that could affect thousands.
Leaders of the FBI were instructed Friday to provide the Justice Department by Tuesday information about all current and former bureau employees who “at any time” worked on January 6 investigations, according to an email from acting FBI director Brian Driscoll and obtained by CNN.
The Justice Department, according to the email, will review those employees to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
“This request,” Driscoll wrote to all bureau personnel, “encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts.” The acting director noted in the email that such a list would also include him, as well as the acting deputy director.
The requested list, which interim DOJ leaders had spent the past week drawing up, highlights how the new administration has moved quickly to deliver on President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back at the Justice Department and FBI that he claims have been weaponized against him. Trump has falsely accused agents of abuse in their court-ordered search of his Mar-a-Lago home and of their treatment of Capitol rioters.
The FBI and Justice Department declined to comment.
Driscoll attached to the email a memo from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove with the subject line “Termination.”
“For each employee included in the lists, provide the current title, office to which the person is assigned, role in the investigation or prosecution, and date of last activity relating to the investigation or prosecution,” Bove wrote. “Upon timely receipt of the requested information, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General will commence a review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
The Bove memo also referenced the removal of senior FBI officials, which CNN previously reported.
“The FBI — including the Bureau’s prior leadership — actively participated in what President Trump appropriated described as ‘a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated on the American people over the last four years’ with respect to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Bove said.
The Justice Department also requested information on FBI personnel who worked on a criminal case brought in September by the previous administration against several high-level members of Hamas over the October 7, 2023, attack.
Driscoll said in his email that “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.”
Friday’s notices of expected termination sent shockwaves throughout the FBI, line-level agents and analysts told CNN.
“This is a massacre meant to chill our efforts to fight crime without fear or favor,” said one agent. “Even for those not fired, it sends the message that the bureau is no longer independent.”
One employee noted the January 6 case, which involved over a thousand defendants located across the country, was the largest investigation ever worked by the FBI.
“Everyone touched this case,” the employee said.
Also on Friday, more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases were fired by the Justice Department, according to communications obtained by CNN,
The prosecutors had worked in the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, on a temporary basis on Capitol riot cases. But at the end of the Biden administration, their jobs were being converted to permanent status, according to a separate DOJ memo obtained by CNN and circulated across the DC US attorney’s office headed by Ed Martin.
“The manner in which these conversions were executed resulted in the mass, purportedly permanent hiring of a group of AUSAs in the weeks leading up to President Trump’s second inauguration, which has improperly hindered the ability of acting U.S. Attorney Martin to staff his Office in furtherance of his obligation to faithfully implement the agenda that the American people elected President Trump to execute,” Bove wrote in that memo.
“I will not tolerate subversive personnel actions by the previous Administration at any U.S. Attorney’s Office. Too much is at stake,” he added.
The Trump purge at DOJ’s main headquarters began last week – within minutes of the new interim leaders being sworn in – as some senior career lawyers were notified that they were being reassigned to a task force focused to immigration-related issues and so-called sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that generally decline to assist federal deportation efforts. The reassignment is widely viewed as an effort to force out senior career officials, some of whom have since resigned.
Emails sent by James McHenry, the acting attorney general, to those being ousted from their jobs have included language that reads: “Given your significant role in prosecuting the President, I do not believe that the leadership of the Department can trust you to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully.”
Some agents say Trump and other critics misunderstand that FBI agents and supervisors can’t choose which assignments they are given as part of their job. The FBI workforce is broadly conservative and until recently were led for years by lifelong Republican Christopher Wray. The nomination of Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, is pending in the Senate.
Many agents initially had qualms about being assigned to the Capitol attack and Trump cases, viewing the prosecutions as heavy-handed, people familiar with the matter said. Some Justice Department lawyers leading January 6 cases complained that they believed agents sometimes slow-walked some of their work.
Shortly after Trump took office, Tom Ferguson, a former agent and aide to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, arrived at the FBI headquarters as a policy adviser. Jordan has been a staunch FBI critic and led a subcommittee on purported weaponization of government agencies, including the FBI.
The FBI Agents Association officials met with Patel in recent weeks to raise concerns about possible firings of agents, urging him to protect agents who did their work investigating violent crimes with oversight from judges, FBI supervisors and Justice Department lawyers, according to people briefed on the meeting.
“During our meeting, he said that agents would be afforded appropriate process and review and not face retribution based solely on the cases to which they were assigned,” the agents association said in a statement.
The statement also warned that “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.”
During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday on his nomination, Patel said he didn’t know of any upcoming personnel plans.
“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” asked Democratic Sen. Cory Booker.
“I am not aware of that, senator,” Patel replied.
This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
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