FBI Purge Includes Official Who Tried to Protect Jan. 6 Investigators
"These firings are part of a broader campaign to weaponize federal law enforcement and replace highly experienced public servants with political hacks eager to carry out Trump's retribution agenda," said one coalition.
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Amid accusations that U.S. President Donald Trump is turning the Department of Justice into his "personal weapon," multiple media outlets reported Thursday that his administration is ousting at least three top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI purge includes Brian Driscoll, who served as acting director earlier this year; Walter Giardina, a special agent involved in the investigation of Trump's ex-trade adviser, Peter Navarro; and Steven Jensen, acting director in charge of the Washington Field Office, unnamed sources told outlets including The Associated Press, The New York Times, and Fox News.
Jensen was involved in investigating the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Driscoll—as head of the FBI before Trump's appointee, Kash Patel, was confirmed—resisted the adminsitration's demand that he turn over a list of agents who worked on probes of the insurrectionists, who were promptly pardoned when Trump returned to power.
Highlighting that battle over the list of agents, the AP detailed:
Emil Bove, the then-senior Justice Department official who made the request and was last week confirmed for a seat on a federal appeals court, wrote a memo accusing the FBI's top leaders of "insubordination."
Responding to Bove's request, the FBI ultimately provided personnel details about several thousand employees, identifying them by unique employee numbers rather than by names.
The three men were reportedly told to leave the FBI by Friday. According to Fox, one source described the removals as "retribution," and multiple people told the outlet that "more ousters are expected at the bureau by the end of the week, though the exact number of personnel included, or their roles at the bureau, are unclear."
The Times noted that "the fresh ousters reflect, in part, a long-running effort by senior Trump administration officials to dismiss agents and prosecutors who worked on cases related to the president. Those have included the investigation into his 2016 campaign's ties to Russia during his first term, the investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office, the investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and the investigations of rioters at the Capitol."
The Not Above the Law coalition's co-chairs—Brett Edkins of Stand Up AmericaPraveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, and Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn—issued a statement blasting Trump and Patel.
The reported ouster "shows just how far they are willing to go to punish anyone who they deem disloyal," the coalition leaders said. "The end result will be an FBI that puts settling political scores ahead of combating crime and protecting our rights."
"These firings are part of a broader campaign to weaponize federal law enforcement and replace highly experienced public servants with political hacks eager to carry out Trump's retribution agenda," they added. "The message to remaining FBI personnel is chilling: Bend the knee to Trump, or you're next."
The reporting came on the same day that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) announced that Patel approved his "request for the FBI to assist state and local law enforcement in locating" Democratic state legislators who fled Texas to block the approval of a gerrymandered map for the 2026 cycle sought by Trump.
Earlier this week, The Guardian spoke with scholars and former prosecutors who sounded the alarm about the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom legal experts have accused of "serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law and the administration of justice."
The Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, "is now being used as a personal weapon on behalf of Trump to a degree that is without precedent," said Peter Shane, who teaches constitutional law at New York University. "Trump has a team of sycophants and enablers at DOJ. They're not behaving the way office holders sworn to uphold the Constitution are expected to behave."
Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor now at George Washington University, similarly told the newspaper that "Trump is using the Justice Department to target his perceived enemies and pursue his political goals."
"The guiding principle for any DOJ prosecutor has always been loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law," Eliason added. "Under this administration, it appears that the primary job requirement for any DOJ prosecutor, up to and including the attorney general, is loyalty to Donald Trump."
