FBI firings are feared as DOJ asks agents to divulge involvement with Jan. 6 investigations
The FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)
FBI officials sent out a questionnaire over the weekend to determine the involvement of thousands of FBI personnel in cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to multiple people who reviewed the document and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The online questionnaire landed in inboxes a day after the FBI’s acting director said the bureau would conduct a broad examination, at the request of the Justice Department, of anyone who touched the sprawling Jan. 6. investigation.
It is the latest sign that the Trump administration aims to deliver on its promises to make dramatic changes in the FBI and the Justice Department and root out people who President Donald Trump or his allies claim acted inappropriately. The survey and other recent moves prompted a letter late Sunday from a team of high-profile lawyers to acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, threatening legal action if FBI or Justice Department personnel are fired without due process.
Bove has asked for a list by Tuesday of all current and former FBI personnel assigned to investigations and prosecutions related to the Capitol attack and a separate terrorism case. The questionnaire appears to be part of the FBI’s attempt to compile that information. It was sent to managers in FBI offices across the country who may have overseen agents or other staffers who worked on a Jan. 6 investigation, according to the people familiar with the matter. The managers were instructed to tell relevant employees to complete the questionnaire by 3 p.m. Monday.
The questionnaire, coupled with the recent abrupt firings of top FBI leaders and fears of more terminations, have created panic within the bureau about its future, according to multiple people familiar with the situation, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.
The agency sent out an unusual message on Saturday saying that, despite rumors to the contrary, the acting director remained in place and had not been fired.
Others are departing, however. On Friday, David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s influential Washington field office, told his staff in an email that he had “been delivered information” that caused him to speed up his retirement plans and that Monday would be his last day on the job.
“I have also become aware of other concerns related to the collection of employee names,” Sundberg wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The Washington Post. “At this time, we do not know what names were collected, whether they were shared, nor any potential actions regarding those names.”
The FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit advocacy group that represents bureau personnel, gave agents guidance on how to assert their legal rights to due process when responding to the survey.
Questions that employees must answer include their current title and their title when they worked on a Jan. 6 case. They are also asked if they were involved in the arrest of a Jan. 6 suspect, testified at a trial, interviewed witnesses, conducted surveillance on suspects and more.
It’s unclear how top FBI officials will use the results of the questionnaire. But many FBI personnel involved in the Jan. 6 investigations, as well as the federal criminal probes related to Trump, were told by supervisors last week that they could be terminated imminently, according to people familiar with the personnel conversations.
The online questionnaire focuses on the Capitol attack, rather than the two special counsel investigations of Trump—one that focused on his alleged misuse of classified documents and the other that probed his alleged efforts to block the results of the 2020 election.
The investigation of the attack has been the biggest in Justice Department history, involving what could add up to thousands of FBI agents and scores of prosecutors. More than 1,580 defendants were charged and more than 1,270 convicted, on charges ranging from misdemeanor parading to seditious conspiracy.
Soon after Trump was inaugurated, he issued a blanket pardon to virtually all of those defendants and commuted the sentences of the 14 he did not immediately pardon. On Friday, interim D.C. U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. dismissed multiple federal prosecutors who have worked on the Capitol riot cases over the past four years. Those prosecutors were still on probationary status.
Since Trump took office, multiple top career officials in the Justice Department and FBI have been fired or transferred to less desirable postings. People familiar with both agencies said they expected Trump to transform them once he took office, but they said the changes are far more drastic and happening faster than they had anticipated.
Many FBI agents and employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases or the Trump investigations also had full caseloads unrelated to those matters—focused on violent crime, drug trafficking, counterterrorism and national security, among other topics.
People familiar with the recent personnel changes and examinations said removing the nation’s most experienced law enforcement officials and agents could result in massive staffing shortages, interrupt ongoing criminal cases and investigations, and create public safety dangers across the country.
One person familiar with the Jan 6. investigation noted that it was initially classified as a domestic terrorism probe. That meant the lead agents were typically those who also serve on Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the multiagency, federal-state-local task forces set up around the country after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to handle some of the country’s most significant national security cases.
Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in federal employment law, said he and other attorneys have been contacted by numerous Justice Department and FBI personnel who believe that they’ll be fired in coming days. Such firings would violate protections for the career employees and deny them due process, Zaid said.
He and attorney Norm Eisen and retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, both of whom serve on the board of the State Democracy Defenders Fund, sent a letter to Bove Sunday night warning that the Justice Department and FBI would be “held to account through all available legal means” for any unlawful actions against employees.
“We’re planning on taking any and all legal steps and remedies to support and protect them,” Zaid said.
Any mass firings would come despite assurances that Kash Patel—Trump’s nominee for FBI director—gave last week at his confirmation hearing. Patel vowed to follow standard bureau procedures before disciplining or dismissing any personnel and told senators his chief priorities would be investigating threats to public safety and expanding partnerships with state and local law enforcement partners.
Patel, who was a vocal critic of the FBI and the Trump and Jan. 6 investigations before his nomination, also testified that he had no knowledge of any planned purges of agents. He said he would not take action against FBI employees simply for the cases to which they’d been assigned.
“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel said.
A spokesperson for Patel did not immediately respond to questions Sunday on whether he had been briefed or involved in discussions on the personnel review underway.
The FBI Agents Association encouraged its members to defer to their supervisors on how to handle the requests. They asked agents to note in their responses to the survey that they were not first advised of their rights, given appropriate time to research their answers or seek the advice of counsel before responding.
“We understand that this feels like agents and employees are being targeted, despite repeated assurances that ‘all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,’” the association said in an email on Sunday that was reviewed by The Post. “Employees carrying out their duties to investigate allegations of criminal activity with integrity and within the rule of law should never be treated as those who have engaged in actual misconduct.”
Acting FBI director Brian Driscoll has told the Justice Department that he opposes any push for a mass purge of agents, according to multiple people familiar with his stance. That pushback set off a wave of rumors and suspicion among bureau employees late Friday that Driscoll—who was appointed by Trump to run the bureau until a permanent director is confirmed—had been fired as acting director.
The FBI responded by sending a message to its workforce Saturday confirming that Driscoll remained the acting director. The message, also reviewed by The Post, noted that Driscoll “remains committed to supporting the administration and ensuring a smooth transition to the incoming Director.”
Later that evening, Driscoll sent his own message to FBI staff that said he has continued to press the Justice Department for discussions about the purpose and intentions behind the review of agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
“Let it be absolutely clear that we do not view anyone’s identification on one of these lists as an indicator of misconduct,” he wrote.
Driscoll noted that news of the reviews came during a week when some agents had been deployed in response to deadly plane crashes in Washington and Philadelphia, others were dealing with personal stress related to the wildfires in California, and hundreds more remained focused on the bureau’s daily work of protecting the United States from national security and criminal threats.
Driscoll was not intended to be named acting director of the bureau, according to multiple people familiar with the personnel matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it.
Instead, FBI officials expected Driscoll to become the acting deputy director once Trump took office. Robert Kissane, a veteran counterterrorism official within the FBI, was expected to be the acting director.
But the White House put Driscoll’s name on the acting director announcement that was released after Trump’s inauguration, and officials decided to keep Driscoll as the acting head and Kissane as the acting deputy.
A White House aide declined to comment on whether there was a mix-up, but said Trump has full confidence in everyone he has appointed as acting directors of the executive branch agencies.
The Wall Street Journal first reported about the name reversal.
Alice Cites and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.