An anonymous group of FBI agents who worked on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot investigation and other federal probes tied to President Trump are suing the federal government over the Justice Department’s plans to review the FBI’s workforce and scrutinize agents who may have worked on the sensitive investigations, according to a new court filing.
The agents are suing the Justice Department and its interim head, Acting Attorney General James McHenry, in a class action lawsuit on behalf of all affected FBI agents. They are asking a federal judge to prevent the public release of the names of the agents who could face scrutiny.
Tuesday’s lawsuit is the latest salvo in an ongoing rift between career FBI employees and Justice Department leadership over the Trump administration’s potential personnel changes within the bureau.
On Sunday, more than 1,000 FBI agents across the country were asked to complete questionnaires about their involvement in the Jan. 6 and Trump probes as part of a Justice Department evaluation of the workforce. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump granted clemency to roughly 1,500 defendants who had been convicted of crimes on Jan. 6.
On Friday, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll to compile a list of all current and former FBI employees who were assigned “at any time” to the Jan. 6 investigation “to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary,” according to a memo reviewed by CBS News.
There is no indication yet about what actions the Justice Department may take against anyone on the compiled lists and so far, a handful of senior career officials have been fired, while rank-and-file agents remain on the job.
The nine unnamed FBI agents who filed the lawsuit on Tuesday alleged, “The purpose for this list is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment action.”
Their attorneys asked for a jury trial and wrote that the agents feared “this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McHenry also recently instructed the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., to fire certain prosecutors who had been assigned to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to a separate memo dated Jan. 31, and reviewed by CBS News. That decision, which mostly affected contract lawyers brought in on an interim basis to prosecute Jan. 6 cases, is not subject to the new lawsuit.
And last week, eight executives at FBI headquarters and the heads of various field offices including in Washington, D.C., were forced to resign, retire or face termination.
James Dennehy, assistant director in charge of the New York FBI office, wrote in a memo to 1,200 agents and support personnel on Friday, “Today we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy.”
The personnel moves make good on a Trump campaign promise to clean house at the Justice Department. Soon after taking office, the president signed an executive order to take on the “weaponization of the federal government.”
Other attorneys and the FBI Agents Association have also sounded the alarm on the recent employment actions and threatened additional legal action.
On Tuesday, Driscoll — who is leading the FBI on an interim basis while Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s nominee to be director, is considered by the Senate — released a video in which he praised the work of the FBI’s workforce but made no mention of the ongoing turmoil.
“We will never take our eyes off of our mission: protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. Because at the bureau, we are focused on our work,” Driscoll said.
