Officials consider a mass purge of FBI agents involved in Trump cases

President Donald Trump’s administration has begun a sweeping effort to potentially 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 could 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 investigations into election interference and the Mar-a-Lago documents. 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 could consider firing, this person said.

The FBI’s acting director, Brian Driscoll, a longtime agent who Trump appointed to run the bureau until a permanent director is confirmed, refused to endorse the effort, two people familiar with the matter said. The effort appears to be orchestrated through the Justice Department and the Trump administration, though the specifics were not clear.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment, and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked Friday in the Oval Office whether he had ordered the firings of FBI agents, Trump said: “No, but we have some very bad people there … I wasn’t involved in that. But if they want to fire some people, it is fine with me.”

A purge of scores of agents from field offices across the country could significantly deplete the bureau’s staffing levels, affect ongoing cases unrelated to Trump or Jan. 6 and create a vacuum that would be difficult to quickly fill. New agents undergo intensive screening and a specialized 18-week training program before they can be deployed in the field.

While FBI agents can be terminated for cause, there is typically an extensive disciplinary process before any such decision.

Mark Zaid, a veteran attorney specializing in federal employment law, said FBI employees are entitled to receive a proposed punishment or discipline action in writing, and also a written justification outlining the security rules or standards of employee conduct they are accused of violating. The employee would then have a two-stage opportunity to appeal a recommended firing or other punishment.

Zaid said any mass dismissal of agents would be legally risky for the Trump administration, which has already fired prosecutors involved in the Trump cases and told multiple senior leaders at the FBI to retire or resign by Monday or face firing.

“What this administration is doing is, they are acting so recklessly and with disregard to any laws or norms, they are making a ton of errors in order to satisfy their outspoken base that seek retribution,” Zaid said. “And they are creating a lot of legal claims.”

The ranks of those told this week to leave the FBI or be fired 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 while there is interim leadership in place 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 - and would contradict recent pledges to avoid such action by Trump’s nominees to lead the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The agents assigned to the Trump election interference investigation did not volunteer to be put on the case, but were assigned by top FBI officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation who asked to remain anonymous to discuss a sensitive matter. The person said this assignment process was intended to ensure the investigative team was not politically biased.

During his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, FBI director nominee 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,” said Patel, who before being nominated had been an outspoken critic of the FBI and the Trump investigations.

Under questioning from U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Patel committed to following standard bureau review processes before disciplining or dismissing any agent. Booker also pressed Patel for a promise to reverse any dismissals that might occur before he could become FBI director, to ensure those procedures were followed. Patel did not explicitly make that commitment in his response.

“I don’t know what’s going on right now over there,” Patel told him. “But I’m committing to you, senator, and your colleagues that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI.”

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

“There will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice,” she told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I will not politicize that office. I will not target people simply because of their political affiliation.”

Last week, however, interim leadership installed at the Justice Department while Bondi awaits confirmation fired more than a dozen officials and prosecutors who had worked on Smith’s cases. And The Washington Post reported Friday that interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin has dismissed about 30 federal prosecutors who worked on cases against participants in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol over the past four years.

The FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit advocacy group that represents FBI personnel, said the plan for firings, if true, would be “fundamentally at odds” with Trump’s law enforcement objectives.

The group said it had received assurances from Patel that agents would not face retribution based on the cases to which they were assigned.

“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 association said in a statement.

Bureau employees traded information throughout much of the day Friday and some sought legal advice, as news of the possible filings circulated.

One person who works at the FBI’s Washington Field Office relayed to a colleague that supervisors had told agents to prepare for the White House to publicly release the names of the agents who worked on the two Trump criminal cases on Monday, and that those agents would to be terminated that same day.

Managers were telling employees to take their personnel files with them over the weekend, another person who was contacted by someone who works for the FBI said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) - the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee which provides oversight to the Justice Department and the FBI - described the recent upheaval at both agencies as “a wrecking ball swinging at the rule of law.”

“These unprecedented purges of hundreds of prosecutors, staff and experienced law enforcement agents will undermine the government’s power to protect our country against national security, cyber, and criminal threats,” he said in a statement. “If allowed to proceed, Trump’s purge of our federal law enforcement workforce will expose America to authoritarianism and dictatorship.”

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Lisa Rein, Derek Hawkins and Mark Berman contributed to this report.