A seal reading “Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation” is displayed on the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington, D.C. in 2022.
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A top Justice Department official said FBI agents who “simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner” when conducting investigations into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot do not face the risk of being fired.
That message to the FBI workforce on Wednesday from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove is the latest in a back-and-forth between the Justice Department and the bureau as the Trump administration looks to remake the department, implement its agenda and push out those it deems disloyal.
“Let me be clear: No FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner with respect to January 6 investigations is at risk of termination or other penalties,” Bove writes in the message, a copy of which was obtained by NPR.
The FBI is part of the Justice Department, which declined to comment.
The message to the workforce comes as Pam Bondi was sworn in as the new attorney general on Wednesday.
The only individuals who should be concerned, the memo says, “are those who acted with corrupt or partisan intent, who blatantly defied orders from Department leadership, or who exercised discretion in weaponizing the FBI.”
The FBI has been in turmoil since last week when Bove issued a memo, with the subject line “Terminations,” that ordered the firing of eight senior FBI officials, and demanded the bureau identify all current and former FBI personnel who worked on Jan. 6 cases or the recent prosecution of Hamas leaders.
That set off panic across the FBI and fears of a mass purge of agents who worked on those investigations.
On Tuesday, the FBI provided the Justice Department with a list of bureau employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases, but that list did not contain names. Instead, the bureau provided employee ID numbers and other information, according to a person familiar with the matter.
