By Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration agreed on Friday not to publicly name FBI employees involved in investigations into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as the president said some would be fired.
The agreement, which a federal judge approved, came after two groups of FBI agents sued the Justice Department to block its officials from releasing the names of employees, amid fears for their safety.
Under terms of the agreement, the department will be prevented from releasing the names until at least late March while lawsuits move forward. The department also agreed it will give the plaintiffs two days’ notice if it decides to release the names in the future.
Several hours later, Trump told reporters he expects to fire some FBI agents for their roles in the January 6 investigation.
“I’ll fire some of them because some of them were corrupt,” he said.
Emil Bove, a former defense lawyer for Trump who now holds a senior role at the Justice Department, previously demanded the information from the FBI as part of what he described as an internal review of misconduct related to the Capitol riot probe, which led to nearly 1,600 criminal cases against Trump supporters.
In that memo, Bove also announced he was firing eight senior FBI officials, and added that after the FBI turned over the list of names, the department would review whether “additional personnel actions are necessary.”
The deal struck in court on Friday came after the acting head of the FBI, Brian Driscoll, turned over to the Justice Department a list containing the names of FBI employees involved in January 6 investigations after days of resistance and the filing of the two lawsuits against the department, according to an email seen by Reuters.
Driscoll told FBI employees in the email that in providing the names, the FBI used a classified system and identified the information as “law enforcement sensitive” to protect employees’ safety.
The dispute over the list has become a flashpoint as the FBI seeks to safeguard its independence during a push by the Trump administration to remove or sideline officials who have worked on investigations condemned by Trump.
Driscoll’s resistance to hand over the names prompted Bove to accuse him of insubordination. A previous list the FBI turned over earlier this week identified agents only by their employee identification numbers, in a bid to protect their safety, according to an earlier internal email seen by Reuters.
The Justice Department, responding to the agents’ lawsuits, has said it has no immediate plans to publicly name the employees included on the list.
Bove has previously said that agents who only followed orders on investigations would not be disciplined.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Caitlin Webber; editing by Andy Sullivan and Rod Nickel)
