The senior FBI official who resisted Trump demands is expelled, the sources say

Washington (AP) – The FBI is forcing higher officials, including an ex -interim director who resisted the Trump Administration Demands to deliver the names of the agents who participated in the investigations of the disturbances of the Capitol of January 6 and the head of the Washington Field Office of the office, according to people familiar with the matter and internal communications observed by the News.

The basis of the expulsion of Brian Driscoll, who directed the office in the turbulent weeks after the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January, was not immediately, but the last day of Driscoll in the FBI is Friday, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the movement of the staff by name and spoke with the AP under the condition of the anonymity.

“I understand that you can have many questions about why, for which I have no answers,” Driscoll wrote in a message to colleagues. “No cause has been articulated at this time.”

Another high profile termination is Steven Jensen, who for months had been the deputy director in charge of the Washington Field Office, one of the largest and most employed in the office. He confirmed in a message to the colleagues on Thursday they had told him that he was being fired as of Friday.

“I intend to face this challenge like any other that you have faced in this organization, with professionalism, integrity and dignity,” Jensen wrote in an email.

Jensen did not say if he had been given a reason, but some Trump supporters had given him a reason for the work in April because he had supervised a section of domestic terrorism after the 2021 disturbances in the Capitol. The FBI has characterized that attack, in which the supporters of the Republican President assaulted the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the electoral results after he lost to the Democrat Joe Biden, as an act of domestic terrorism.

The people familiar with the matter identified another agent who was expelled as Walter Giardina, who has extracted the scrutiny of Senator Chuck Grassley, republican president of the Senate Judicial Committee. The previous investigations of Giardina have included what in Trump Peter Navarro assistant, who was convicted of contempt for Congress.

Federal Research Office

FBI spokesmen declined to comment on Thursday. The FBI agents association said in a statement that it was concerned about the reports of the shots of the upper leaders and that it was reviewing all the legal options to defend its members. The group said that shooting agents without due process would cause the country to be less safe.

“There is a revision process when work measures are taken against the agents. The process was established so that the FBI can remain independent and apolitical. The leadership of the FBI committed, both publicly and directly to FBIAA, which would comply with that process. We urged them to honor that commitment and follow the law,” said the statement.

A broader personnel purge

The news about Driscoll and Jensen occurs in the middle of a much broader personnel purge that has been developed in recent months under the leadership of the director of the FBI Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino. Numerous senior officials, including the main agents in charge of the field offices of the big cities, have been expelled from their work, and some agents have been subjected to polygraph exams, movements that former officials say they have started the workforce and contributed to Angst.

Driscoll is a veteran agent who worked in international anti -terrorism investigations in New York and had commanded the hostage rescue team from the office. Recently he served as an interim director by the FBI critical incident response group, which displays resources in crisis situations.

Driscoll was appointed interim director in January to replace Christopher Wray and served in the position, since Patel nomination was pending.

Driscoll arrived at the headlines after he and Robert Kissane, the director of Defense, resisted the demands of the Trump administration for a list of agents who participated in investigations in the disturbances of January 6. Many within the FBI had seen that application as a precursor of massive shots, particularly in the light of separate movements to fire the members of the special team of the special lawyer Jack Smith that prosecuted Trump, reassigned senior officials of the Department of Carrera Justice and expel prosecutors on January 6 and the main executives of the FBI.

The request of the Department of Justice

Emil Bove, the official of the Department of Justice-Senior who made the request and was confirmed last week for a federal appeal court, wrote a memorandum at that time accusing the main leaders of “insubordination” of the FBI for resisting their requests “to identify the central team” responsible for the investigations of January 6.

He said the requests were intended to “allow the Department of Justice to make a review of the conduct of these particular agents in accordance with Trump’s executive order” on the “weapon” in the Biden Administration.

Responding to Bove application, the FBI provided personnel details about several thousand employees, identifying them by unique employees instead of names.

In his farewell note, Driscoll told his colleagues that it was “the honor of my life to serve each of you.”

He wrote: “Our collective sacrifice for those we serve is, and it will always be worth it. I do not regret anything. You are my heroes and remain in debt.”

Degraded, reassigned and pushed agents

The FBI moved under patel surveillance to aggressively degrade, reallocate or expel agents seen as outside the leadership of the office or the Trump administration.

In April, for example, the office reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

Numerous special agents have been told in charge of the field offices that withdraw, resign or accept reallocation.

Another agent, Michael Feinberg, said publicly that he was told to resign or accept degradation in the midst of a scrutiny of the leadership of his friendship with Peter Strzok, a main agent in the Trump-Russia investigation of the FBI that was fired by the Department of Justice in 2018 after the revelations that he had exchanged negative text messages on Trump with a page of Lisa, smooth, smooth. Feinberg said he resigned.

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News writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.