Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the firings of the Jan. 6 prosecutors days after President Donald Trump’s sweeping clemency action benefiting the more than 1,500 people charged in the U.S. Capitol attack, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.
A separate memo by Bove identified more than a half-dozen FBI senior executives who were ordered to retire or be fired by Monday, and also asked for the names, titles and offices of all FBI employees who worked on investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol riot — a list the bureau’s acting director said could number in the thousands.
“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,” acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll wrote in a letter to the workforce.
Any mass firings at the FBI would be a major blow to the historic independence from the White House of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency but would be in keeping with Trump’s persistent resolve to bend the law enforcement and intelligence community to his will.
The FBI Agents Association said the reported efforts to oust agents represented “outrageous actions by acting officials” that were “fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents.”
It was not immediately clear what recourse any fired agent might take, but the bureau has a well-defined process for terminations and any abrupt action that bypasses that protocol could presumably open the door to a legal challenge.
Asked by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker whether he would reverse any decisions before his confirmation that don’t follow that standard process, Patel said, “I don’t know what’s going on right now over there, but I’m committed to you, senator, and your colleagues, that I will honor the due process of the FBI.”
Trump has for years expressed fury at the FBI and Justice Department over investigations that shadowed his presidency, including an inquiry into ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign, and continued over the last four years. He fired one FBI director, James Comey, amid the Russia investigation and then replaced his second, Christopher Wray, just weeks after his win in November.
He added, “If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing, because they were very bad.”
The Justice Department also charged more than 1,500 Trump supporters in connection with the Capitol riot, though Trump on his first day in office granted clemency to all of them — including the ones convicted of violent crimes — through pardons, sentence commutations and dismissals of indictments.
With wires
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