The Justice Department fired dozens of federal prosecutors involved in Jan. 6 cases on Friday and informed the FBI that it would initiate a “review process” to determine if thousands of agents that worked Capitol riot investigations should also be terminated.
The axed prosecutors were informed of their dismissal in a letter from interim DC US Attorney Ed Martin, according to multiple outlets.
Martin told the 30 or so fired federal prosecutors that they were being removed as a direct result of their role in the prosecution of some of the more than 1,500 individuals who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The interim DC US attorney’s letter also cited President Trump’s Day One executive order pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, which referred to the prosecutions as “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years.”
Martin had asked Jan. 6 prosecutors on Monday to turn over information related to the use of “obstructing an official proceeding of Congress” charges in Capitol riot cases as part of an internal review.
The Supreme Court ruled last June that the charge – used on more than 300 riot defendants – was too broadly applied.
Martin described the use of the charge in Jan. 6 cases as a “great failure of our office” and indicated that a report on the matter would be completed by Friday, which coincided with the firings.
The Trump administration is expected to carry out more firings related to Jan. 6 probes/
Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, Jr., informed employees Friday that the DOJ had asked for a list of people at the bureau who worked on Capitol riot cases as part of “a review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary,” according to multiple outlets.
Driscoll noted that his name and “thousands” of others would be passed along to the DOJ.
“We understand that this request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts,” Driscoll wrote in a memo, according to NBC News.
“I am one of those employees,” he added.
The labor union representing more than 14,000 active and former FBI Special Agents expressed outrage over the DOJ investigation, which could lead to firings.
“If true, these outrageous actions by acting officials are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents,” the FBI Agents Association said in a statement.
“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 union added. “These actions also contradict the commitments that Attorney General-nominee Pam Bondi and Director-nominee Kash Patel made during their nomination hearings before the United States Senate.”
“They also run counter to the commitment that Director-nominee Patel made to the FBI Agents Association, where during our meeting he said that Agents would be afforded appropriate process and review and not face retribution based solely on the cases to which they were assigned.”
NBC News also reported David Sundberg, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, was notified Thursday that he would be forced out, along with six top officials at the FBI’s Washington headquarters.
Sundberg’s field office worked closely with former special counsel Jack Smith in his probes into Trump and also handled Capitol riot cases.
The FBI’s Washington field office was also recently slammed by House Republicans in a report on the “little meaningful progress” that has been made in identifying and apprehending the person responsible for placing pipe bombs outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters Jan. 5, 2021.
The report warned that Americans were “less secure” as a result of the FBI’s “failure” to identify the person responsible for the attempted bombings.
Trump, 78, told reporters Friday that he was not aware that federal prosecutors or FBI officials had been fired.
“No, but we have some very bad people over there. It was weaponized at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “They came after a lot of people like me, but they came after a lot of people. No, I wasn’t involved in that. I’ll have to see what is exactly going on after this is finished.”
“If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing, because they were very bad. They were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization,” he added. “They used the Justice Department to go after their political opponent, which in itself is illegal, and obviously it didn’t work.”
The FBI’s national office and Washington field office declined comment.
The DOJ and White House did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
