FBI agents who worked on January 6 and Trump investigations are expected to be fired Friday
CNN
The Trump administration is set to expand a purge of career law enforcement officials, with dozens of FBI agents who investigated January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack and Trump-related investigations as well as some supervisors being evaluated for possible removal as soon as the end of Friday, according to people briefed on the matter.
The Trump administration is set to expand a purge of career law enforcement officials, with dozens of FBI agents who worked on January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack and Trump-related investigations as well as some supervisors being evaluated for possible removal as soon as the end of Friday, according to people briefed on the matter. The changes highlight 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. Interim leaders at the Justice Department have spent the past week drawing up lists of people whose work at the bureau has earned disfavor with Trump for a variety of reasons. Agents and analysts have been warned by FBI leadership that they may be asked to resign or face termination. Agents who worked the investigation of Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, and those who investigated the roughly 1,600 rioters charged or convicted connected to the violent US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, have been concerned they could face retribution for doing work they were assigned to do. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment. 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 an 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.
In 2020, then-Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced legislation calling on the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 revealed the existence of the bulk collection of American phone records by the NSA before fleeing to Russia.