A top Justice Department official accused the FBI’s acting leaders of “insubordination” in a Wednesday memo in which he sought to soothe anxiety inside the bureau over the potential for a broad purge of agents involved in investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The memo from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said agents “who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner” while investigating the Capitol attack face no risk of being fired.
But the memo also provided no reassurances for any agents found to have “acted with corrupt or partisan intent” and suggests those employees, if there are any, are at risk of discipline or even termination as part of a highly unusual review process the Trump administration is embarking upon to identify what it says is potential misconduct.
The scrutiny of career FBI agents being undertaken by the department is highly unusual given that rank-and-file agents do not select the cases they are assigned to work on and are not generally disciplined because of their participation in matters seen as politically sensitive. There’s also been no evidence any FBI agents or lawyers who investigated or prosecuted the cases did anything wrong.
The message from Bove is aimed at providing a measure of clarity after days of turmoil and uncertainty at the FBI as a result of an extraordinary Justice Department demand on Friday for the names of agents who participated in the investigations so that officials could determine whether additional personnel action was merited.
Many within the FBI had seen that request as a precursor for mass firings, particularly in light of separate moves to fire members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team that investigated Donald Trump, reassign senior career Justice Department officials and force out prosecutors on Jan. 6 cases and multiple top FBI executives.
Trump and his Republican allies have long accused then-President Joe Biden’s Justice Department of being “weaponized” against conservatives. They have focused particular ire on prosecutions arising from the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building in a failed effort to halt the certification of the 2020 election after the incumbent Republican lost to Democrat Biden. On the first day of Trump’s second term, he granted sweeping clemency — through pardons and sentence commutations — to more than 1,500 rioters.
Adding to the angst was that thousands of FBI employees who participated in investigations related to Jan. 6 were asked over the weekend to complete in-depth questionnaires about their involvement in the inquiries as Trump’s Justice Department weighs disciplinary actions.
FBI employees filed two lawsuits Tuesday to halt the collection and potential dissemination of names of investigators. A hearing is scheduled on Thursday.
Bove, in his memo Wednesday, accused the FBI’s acting leadership of “insubordination” for resisting his requests last week “to identify the core team” responsible for Jan. 6 investigations. He said the requests were meant to “permit the Justice Department to conduct a review of those particular agents’ conduct pursuant to Trump’s executive order” on “weaponization” in the Biden administration.
After acting Director Brian Driscoll refused to comply, Bove wrote, he broadened the request for information about all FBI employees who participated in the investigations. Driscoll had no response to the insubordination allegation, the FBI said.
Responding to Bove’s request, the FBI provided personnel details about several thousand employees, identifying them by unique employee numbers rather than by names.
“Let me be clear,” wrote Bove, who was previously part of Trump’s legal team in his criminal cases. “No FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner with respect to January 6 investigations is at risk of termination or other penalties.”
But, he added, “The only individuals who should be concerned about the process initiated by my January 31, 2025 memo are those who acted with corrupt or partisan intent, who blatantly defied orders from Department leadership, or who exercised discretion in weaponizing the FBI.”