(Headline USA) Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, who himself helped to coordinate a controversial 2022 raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, affirmed his refusal to cooperate with a White House directive to weed out partisan FBI agents who may attempt to engage in seditious “resistance” activities.
The revelation in court on Thursday prompted critics to call for Driscoll to be replaced while awaiting the Senate confirmation of Trump nominee Kash Patel for the post.
During a court hearing this morning, lawyers representing the FBI admitted acting FBI director Brian Driscoll defied a directive by his superior at DOJ to collect names of FBI personnel involved in Jan 6 cases.
I predicted Driscoll, given his earlier insubordination, would be…
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) February 6, 2025
It echoed, in some ways, the insubordination that prompted Trump to fire figures such as acting Attorney General Sally Yates and FBI Director James Comey at the start of his first term, once it became clear that denizens of the deep state were engaged in subversive efforts to undermine the Republican president.
Yet, despite the concerns of a repeat of the Russia-collusion hoax, the Justice Department, under the stewardship of newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi, signaled a willingness—for the time being—to what seemed to be a compromise to continue masking the identities of anti-Trump FBI operatives.
In a court filing Friday, the DOJ agreed to refrain from publicly identifying any FBI agents whose conduct wass under review as Trump’s administration examines the investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising at the U.S. Capitol.
Attorneys for FBI employees filed two lawsuits Tuesday to halt the collection and potential dissemination of agents’ names. Many within the FBI feared the Justice Department would use a list of names to conduct mass firings.
Trump appeared to raise that prospect at an appearance at the White House on Friday. Asked whether his administration would fire agents involved in the Jan. 6 investigations, he said he would “fire some of them because some of them were corrupt” and added that the process would be done quickly and “surgically.”
Attorneys for the disloyal FBI agents asked U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb to issue an order temporarily barring the federal government from publicly identifying them. A hearing on that request started Thursday and was scheduled to resume Friday, but government lawyers asked the judge to cancel it and sign off on their agreement instead.
In Friday’s court filing, the Justice Department said the government will not release the list of agents to the public, either “directly or indirectly,” before the judge rules on the merits of the lawsuits.
Thousands of FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases were asked to complete in-depth questionnaires. In response to the request, the FBI provided Justice Department officials with personnel details about several thousand employees.
The bureau initially identified agents by employee number rather than by name. But Friday’s court filing says the FBI subsequently turned over a record that pairs the numbers with corresponding names.
Attorneys for the Justice Department and FBI agents spent several hours inside and outside Cobb’s courtroom on Thursday, but they were unable to reach an agreement before the end of the day.
The Justice Department set a deadline Tuesday for the FBI to provide a list of all current and former FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 criminal investigations so officials could determine if they should be disciplined.
Attorneys for FBI agents claimed it would cause them irreparable harm if their names were released. They noted the names of individual employees from other federal agencies already have spread on social media, making them targets of online harassment.
“The risk to these agents is horrendous,” said plaintiffs’ attorney, left-wing lawfare activist Norman Eisen.
Government attorneys argued that the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order “is based entirely on speculation” according to a court filing.
“Plaintiffs can point to nothing that suggests the Government intends to make public the list in this case,” they wrote. “To the contrary, the Department and FBI management have repeatedly stressed the purpose of the list is to conduct an internal review, not expose dedicated special agents to public insult or ridicule.”
In a memo Wednesday, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said agents “who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner” while investigating the J6 political dissidents faced no risk of being fired. But the memo also provided no reassurances for any agents found to have “acted with corrupt or partisan intent.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
