As Kash Patel waits for the Senate Judiciary Committee to begin voting on confirming his nomination to head the FBI, the agency has been dealing with a barrage of blows from the Donald Trump Administration. However, the attack by the MAGA camp has only made the agents under fire resilient.
The attack, to the uninformed, is basically a 13-page-long questionnaire that was sent on February 2 to FBI employees and special agents, probing their involvement, if any, in the January 6 investigations. It didn’t come as a surprise to many, though, as it was evident that Donald Trump and his allies were just coming after the people who had a role to play in the investigation and prosecution of the protestors and Trump himself.
Almost everyone at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, right from the upper ranks to the entry levels, is putting up a united front, taking a stand against the persecution. Their methods range from 2 class-action lawsuits filed on February 4 to outright resistance by the agents who are temporarily leading the FBI as Kash Patel awaits his confirmation.
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James E. Dennehy, Assistant Director of the FBI, wrote about the witchhunt by Donald Trump in a staff memo earlier this month. It read, “We find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy.”
Dennehy also hailed acting FBI Chief Brian Driscoll and his deputy as “warriors” and declared that it “was time for me to dig in.”
An attorney with the Center for Employment Justice who was representing 9 of the unnamed FBI agents in one of the lawsuits (mentioned above) labeled the Donald Trump Administration’s actions as an attempt to “intimidate FBI agents and set these folks up for termination for having simply done their jobs.”
Scott Lempert continued, “There is no legitimate business purpose for aggregating and consolidating lists of individuals who worked on a particular matter.”
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Emil Bove, the acting Deputy General, in an email addressed to the targeted FBI agents, explained that the questionnaire was part of “a review process (to) determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
“The purpose of the requests was to permit the Justice Department to conduct a review of those particular agents’ conduct pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order concerning weaponization in the prior administration,” Bove continued.
The Department of Justice, on January 31, fired several prosecutors involved in the January 6 investigations. Bove, on the same day, ordered Brian Driscoll to dismiss 8 senior FBI officials.
Nancy Savage, Executive Director of the Society of Former Special Agents, revealed what one of the officials was told while being dismissed. “What (one official) was told was ‘you are being removed because the acting Attorney General has lost confidence that you will faithfully execute the agenda of the Administration,'” Savage disclosed.
Bove, however, maintained the stance that “no FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner (is) at risk of termination or other penalties.”
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Lambert didn’t seem to buy into it, saying, “There’s a whole process that has to be done for civil servants to terminate somebody. There’s no due process here.”
Emil Bove’s current actions are seemingly in contradiction to the time that he was serving at the US Attorney’s office for New York’s southern district, though, as he helped FBI agents locate multiple Capitol riots suspects at the time.
Christopher Leary, a former FBI official, commented on it, saying, “At no point did I ever hear him or anybody else express concern about these investigations and these arrests that we were making.”
Lambert opined on the possibilities of the list of the persecuted agents being made public, calling it a “national security issue.” He expressed concerns over the threats it posed for them and their families.
Fortunately, a federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to keep the list of names confidential.
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An attorney representing the FBI Agents Association in its lawsuit against the Department of Justice said, “Under this order, if the Government intends to release the names of any FBI personnel, it must notify us in advance so that we can again challenge and prevent any planned disclosure.”
And while Donald Trump still intends to “quickly, and very surgically” fire a few agents as he believes that “some of them were corrupt,” the Chief of Police of Palm Springs Police Department has assured that he’d “be more than happy to take as many as I can get.” Andrew Mills added, “They still have policing in their blood.”
