Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll is on shaky ground with Department of Justice leaders for refusing to deliver the names of bureau employees involved in Jan. 6 cases and other Trump investigations.
President Trump tapped Mr. Driscoll, an FBI veteran, to lead the bureau temporarily while his nominee for director, Kash Patel, goes through the Senate confirmation process. But questions remain over whether Mr. Driscoll can stay in the job before Mr. Patel is confirmed and sworn in.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove on Friday ordered Mr. Driscoll to compile a list of all current and former FBI employees assigned “at any time” to the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol for review “to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
“These lists should include relevant supervisory personnel in FBI regional offices and field divisions, as well as at FBI Headquarters,” read the memo instructed by the acting director.
“We understand that this request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts,” Mr. Driscoll wrote in a response. “I am one of those employees.”
Mr. Driscoll sent an email late Friday to all FBI employees that included a DOJ order to fire eight FBI executives.
In his email, Mr. Driscoll expressed his reluctance to comply with the Justice Department’s first request to identify employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
However, according to sources, he refused the DOJ’s demand altogether after its subsequent request, which was to provide by late Monday detailed information on how each employee was involved, and to what extent, in the 1,300 cases.
Thousands of FBI employees’ names are currently on the list.
“You have a lot of people that were like, ’Oh, I’ll do a couple of misdemeanor arrests. No big deal.’ But they did them, and so those people fully expect to be gone,” one former FBI source said. “And other people that were working on them may be gone, too, no matter how much work they’ve done.”
The FBI told The Washington Times that Mr. Driscoll is still the acting director, but there is speculation among current and former FBI agents over whether he will remain in that position after refusing Mr. Bove’s order.
Sources said that Mr. Driscoll’s team drove him to Newark, New Jersey, where he previously headed the field office.
FBI agents are said to be in a panic and a protest by employees and former employees Monday at the Washington Field Office and headquarters are in the planning stages.
According to sources, at least 20 FBI executive assistant directors, assistant directors and special agents in charge throughout the U.S. were forced out of the agency on Thursday.
FBI officials who lost their posts or were forced to retire include Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the Miami field office; Spencer Evans, special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office; and David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the Washington, D.C., field office.
The Times also learned that squads of FBI agents were escorted out of field offices in New York, Miami and Washington. Agents who were escorted from the Miami office were involved in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
