FBI turns over details of 5,000 employees who worked on January 6 cases to Trump Justice Department, as agents sue – CNN

FBI officials have complied with demands to provide the Justice Department with details of thousands of employees who worked on investigations related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot, according to people familiar with the situation.

The demand has caused consternation among FBI employees who fear it is meant to amass a list of personnel for possible termination by the Trump administration.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, in a Friday memo with the subject line “Terminations,” had given FBI officials a noon deadline Tuesday to submit the details of thousands of agents and analysts. Bove previously ordered the firing of eight senior FBI officials, including those who oversaw cyber, national security and criminal investigations.

More than 5,000 employee details were submitted, including employee ID numbers, job titles and their role in the January 6 investigations, sources said, but not their names. There are more than 13,000 agents and 38,000 total FBI employees.

Meanwhile, officials dispatched by Elon Musk have been seen at FBI headquarters. Musk has headed up efforts by President Donald Trump’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

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But several FBI employees on Tuesday sued the Justice Department, accusing it of violating the Constitution and privacy laws by demanding that agents complete a survey allegedly designed to “purge” bureau personnel. The agents want a federal judge to block the Trump administration from publishing or releasing the surveys or any information included in their answers.

“The very act of compiling lists of persons who worked on matters that upset Donald Trump is retaliatory in nature, intended to intimidate FBI agents and other personnel, and to discourage them from reporting any future malfeasance and by Donald Trump and his agents,” the lawsuit alleges.

The survey agents were required to fill out included questions about their positions at the bureau and specific roles in January 6 investigations, including whether they executed arrests, participated in grand jury investigations or testified at trials, according to a copy of the survey included in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was brought by several anonymous FBI employees as a class-action complaint.

The effort to fire anyone involved in Trump-related probes has been slowed in part by pushback from agents, including some who are working with new administration officials pushing for the cultural changes at FBI headquarters that Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, has promised, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Groups representing current and former agents reached out to congressional Republicans to urge the White House to abide by Patel’s promise in his Senate hearing last week that agents wouldn’t face political retribution for working on cases they were assigned.

Patel also indicated there would be a process to review the work of agents.

Bove’s Friday memo, which came after the eight firings of senior officials had already taken place, officially laid out what appears to be the process that Patel described in his testimony.

“Upon receipt of the requested information, the office of the deputy attorney general will, commence a review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary,” Bove wrote.

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

FBI employees, who for months have braced for massive changes with Trump’s election victory, have been surprised at attempts to punish agents and analysts who don’t have a choice on which cases they are assigned.

Last month, the Justice Department fired more than a dozen officials who worked on the federal criminal investigations into Trump. A letter from acting Attorney General James McHenry to the officials said they not could be “trusted” to “faithfully” implement Trump’s agenda.

Like many in law enforcement, the FBI work force generally leans conservative. And in the aftermath of January 6, many agents expressed reluctance at being involved in Capitol riot cases, complaining that the response was heavy-handed.

On his first day in office, Trump issued a blanket pardon to those arrested and convicted for their roles in the violent US Capitol riot.

Some agents in recent years have complained about the growth in ranks of management at FBI headquarters, and the focus on cases run from the Washington area. But even among those who have chafed at FBI leadership, the moves to conduct a broader purge has been shocking, according to current and former agents.

On Monday, a group of advocacy organizations representing federal law enforcement officers urged congressional leaders to prevent the Trump administration from purging career FBI career officials.

The top agent in the FBI’s New York field office, meanwhile, told his colleagues he’s digging a “foxhole” to protect them.

“Do NOT resign or offer to resign,” the FBI Agents Association told members in an email obtained by CNN. “While we would never advocate for physical non-compliance, you need to be clear your removal is not voluntary.”

Separately, lawyers for prosecutors and FBI agents called the possible dismissal of employees who worked on Trump-related investigations a “violation of the due process rights” and threatened legal action in a letter to senior DOJ officials Sunday night.

“If you proceed with terminations and/or public exposure of terminated employees’ identities, we stand ready to vindicate their rights through all available legal means,” the lawyers wrote to Bove.

The letter warns that should names of the agents become public, they would be subject to “immediate risk of doxing, swatting, harassment, or possibly worse.”

The chief judge of DC’s federal trial court granted the requests of anonymous public employees in multiple cases against the Trump administration to move forward in the proceedings using pseudonyms.

In granting the requests – two of them, in separate cases brought by FBI employees against the Justice Department, and a third, in a legal challenge brought by federal employees against the Office of Personnel Management – Chief Judge James Boasberg pointed to concerns raised by their lawyers that the employees faced risks of harassment and threats by suing Trump.

The filings in one of the cases, Boasberg said, showed “numerous instances in which FBI agents have been doxed in online posts or subjected to violent attacks because of their involvement in investigations concerning President Trump.” The efforts by January 6 rioters, including those pardoned by Trump, to publicize the identities of the FBI agents working on those cases also weighed on Boasberg’s decision.

“Such concerns are as troubling as those that typically justify pseudonymity,” Boasberg wrote.

In the FBI cases, the plaintiffs’ names will be shared confidentially with the Justice Department. But Boasberg is allowing the OPM staffers to withhold their identities from the government defendants, as their lawyer argued they could also face professional consequences if the government learned their identity. That case alleges OPM failed to assess data security issues when setting up an email distribution system used to blast the entire federal civil service..

The three cases will now be assigned to judges who will oversee them going forward. Boasberg said those judges could revisit his decisions on anonymity.

Correction: This story and headline have been updated to reflect the type of information the FBI handed over on the 5,000 employees.
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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/fbi-employees-tuesday/index.html