Trump administration moving to fire FBI agents involved in investigations of Trump, AP sources say
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WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials are moving to fire FBI agents engaged in investigations involving President Trump, two people familiar with the plans said Friday.
It was not clear how many agents might be affected, though scores of investigators were involved in various inquiries involving Trump. Officials acting at the direction of the administration have been working to identify individual employees who participated in politically sensitive investigations for possible termination, said the people who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The terminations would be a major blow to the historic independence from the White House of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency and would reflect Trump’s determination to bend the law enforcement and intelligence community to his will.
It’s part of a startling pattern of retribution waged on federal government employees, following the forced ousters of a group of senior FBI executives earlier this week as well as a mass firing by the Justice Department of prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team who investigated Trump.
Trump’s Justice Department says it has fired more than a dozen officials involved in prosecutions of the president.
The FBI Agents Assn. called any such planned firings “outrageous” and said they would be “fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents.
“Dismissing potentially hundreds of agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure,” the association said in a statement.
The FBI and Smith’s team investigated Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and over the holding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both of those cases resulted in indictments that were withdrawn after Trump’s November presidential win because of longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
The Trump administration has fired about 17 independent inspectors general at federal agencies.
The Justice Department also brought charges against more than 1,500 Trump supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, though Trump on his first day in office granted clemency to them — including those convicted of violent crimes — through pardons, sentence commutations and dismissals of indictment.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment, and an FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
The firings would be done over the will of the acting FBI director Brian Driscoll, who has indicated that he objects to the idea, the two people said.
Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.
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