DOJ official says FBI agents merely following orders on Jan. 6 cases can keep jobs

FBI agents who were merely following orders while investigating cases related to the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, won’t lose their jobs, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. The article referenced a memo acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove reportedly sent to acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll. In what appeared to be a copy of the memo circulating on social media, Bove said that the only FBI employees who needed to worry about losing their jobs over their role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riots were those who acted in a partisan or corrupt manner. WORLD has not independently verified the memo.

Why was Bove sending this information in a memo to Driscoll? Two separate groups of anonymous FBI employees filed lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday. In one of the lawsuits, a class action complaint, nine FBI employees claimed they could lose their jobs because of work they did on investigations related to the Jan 6, 2021, Capitol riots or President Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

In the other lawsuit, seven FBI employees asked the court to protect them from having their roles in investigations related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, exposed to individuals who might seek to take retaliatory action against them.

Both lawsuits said employees at the FBI were given surveys asking them to describe the role they played in investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021. The employees believed that the surveys were distributed with the intent of identifying individuals the administration might seek to fire for their roles in the investigations.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Pamela Bondi, getting confirmed by the senate late last night.