(Headline USA) The FBI is forcing out more senior officials, including former Acting Director Brian Driscoll, who initially disobeyed a lawful order from the Justice Department to compile a list of agents who were involved in the prosecution of Jan. 6 protestors. The FBI also reportedly fired Steven J. Jensen, who was in charge of the bureau’s domestic terrorism operations section during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising.
The basis for the ouster of Driscoll, who led the bureau in the weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, were not immediately clear, but Driscoll’s final day at the FBI is Friday.
“I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I have no answers,” Driscoll wrote in a message to colleagues. “No cause has been articulated at this time.”
Jensen, for his part, had initially received a promotion from Director Kash Patel to run the Washington field office. Jensen confirmed in a message to colleagues Thursday he had been told he was being fired effective Friday.
“I intend to meet this challenge like any other I have faced in this organization, with professionalism, integrity and dignity,” Jensen wrote in an email.
According to testimony from the Democrats’ Jan. 6th Commission, Jensen called J6 protestors “terrorists” and promised to “round them all up.”
Spokespeople for the FBI declined to comment Thursday.
Agents demoted, reassigned and pushed out
The FBI has moved under Patel’s watch to demote, reassign or push out some agents who are apparently perceived to be anti-Trump.
In April, for instance, the bureau reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
Numerous special agents in charge of field offices have been told to retire, resign or accept reassignment.
Another agent, Michael Feinberg, has said publicly that he was told to resign or accept a demotion amid scrutiny from leadership of his friendship with Peter Strzok, a lead agent on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, who was fired by the Justice Department in 2018 following revelations that he had exchanged negative text messages about Trump with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
