FBI considering mass purge of agents involved in Trump investigations

President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a sweeping effort to fire a large number of FBI agents across the country who worked on investigations targeting the president and his supporters, three people familiar with the plan said Friday.

It was not clear how many agents might ultimately be affected, but officials are working to identify potentially hundreds for possible termination, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private personnel plans.

Of specific interest in their review were agents who worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents, the people said. One person said agents involved in building cases against rioters in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol also were being considered for termination.

A former law enforcement official familiar with the situation said FBI employees at the bureau’s downtown Washington headquarters have been asked to turn over internal files of the election-interference and Mar-a-Lago documents investigations. The Trump administration is reviewing those files for the names of FBI case agents and supervisors who were involved, to make lists of personnel they plan to fire, this person said.

The FBI’s acting director, Brian Driscoll, a veteran agent who Trump appointed to run the bureau until a permanent director is confirmed, refused to approve the mass firings, two people familiar with the matter said.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.

The plan appears to be orchestrated by leaders installed from outside the agency in recent days by the Trump administration, several people said.

Earlier this week, multiple senior leaders at the FBI were ordered to retire or resign by Monday or face firing. Their ranks included several executive assistant directors as well as special agents in charge of some of the bureau’s field offices across the country.

It is highly unusual for senior staffing changes to be made by interim leaders at the FBI, a law enforcement agency that is supposed to be insulated from politics. But a mass purge of field agents, the front line investigators in FBI cases, would signal an even greater escalation of what has become a startling pattern of retribution - and would contradict recent pledges to avoid such action by Trump’s nominees to lead both the FBI and the Department of Justice.

During his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, Trump’s pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, vowed not to take action against bureau employees simply because they’d worked on investigations tied to the president.

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel told lawmakers, adding later: “Every FBI employee will be held to the absolute same standard, and no one will be terminated for case assignments.”

Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, gave similar assurances regarding Justice Department employees during her hearing earlier this month.

Last week, however, the Justice Department’s interim leadership fired more than a dozen officials and prosecutors who had worked on Smith’s cases.

The FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit advocacy group that represents personal FBI personnel, said in a statement Friday that Patel had assured the group agents would not face retribution based on the cases to which they were assigned.

The association said the plan for firings, if true, would be “fundamentally at odds” with Trump’s law enforcement objectives.

“Dismissing potentially hundreds of agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure,” the statement said.

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