A group of attorneys have put the Justice Department “on notice,” warning that the continued firing of prosecutors or FBI agents could trigger swift legal action. In recent days, Trump appointees have begun terminating or threatening to terminate people who lawfully investigated Jan. 6 or President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home when he was under criminal indictment for allegedly illegally retaining classified documents.
Lawyers representing some of these now-former career officials said in a letter to deputy acting Attorney General Emil Bove that the firings that began last week may violate simple due process rights and that those targeted for termination are profoundly concerned that the Justice Department is now “planning to publicly disseminate the names of those employees they plan to or will actually be terminating, despite the risk of stigmatization.”
Attorney Mark Zaid and representatives of the State Democracy Defenders Fund, including the watchdog’s executive chair Norm Eisen and its board member and retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, wrote, “The continuation in this course of action is a direct assault on the national security of the American citizens you have sworn to faithfully and unselfishly serve.”
Last week, the FBI’s acting director Brian Driscoll informed staff at the bureau that Bove — who once represented Trump in his criminal cases — asked for a list of FBI agents or other employees who worked on Jan. 6 prosecutions. Bove said he would then “determine whether any additional personnel actions were necessary.”
A former U.S. attorney who investigated Jan. 6 said that they knew at least 25 of 30 agents who had been fired or transferred to another office, according to Politico. Meanwhile, at least six of the senior most leaders at the FBI were also pushed out, NBC News reported on Jan. 31. The Justice Department announced last week that over a dozen prosecutors who worked on criminal probes of Donald Trump under former special counsel Jack Smith were fired after being deemed unable to “faithfully implement” Trump’s agenda.
“Given your significant role in prosecuting the president, I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president’s agenda faithfully,” that firing memo said, according to The New York Times.
Over the weekend, Zaid, Eisen and Gertner, in a letter to Bove argued that the firings violate federal privacy laws, which already bar the disclosure of federal officials’ records without their consent.
“As you well know, FBI agents routinely investigate violent and sophisticated criminals — many of whom are ultimately prosecuted and incarcerated, and harbor animosity toward law enforcement,” they wrote. “These agents include individuals with decades of sensitive experience at the FBI and public exposure of their identities would subject them to immediate risk of doxing, swatting, harassment or possibly worse.”
Indeed, they added, the prospect of this harm has already been “threatened by some who were convicted of crimes for their activities on Jan. 6, 2021.”
Trump pardoned or commuted over 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, including those who were convicted of violent police assault or were convicted of engaging in a violent conspiracy to seditiously stop the nation’s transfer of power.
The lawyers for the fired prosecutors and agents say that, at a minimum, individuals who were let go should have been given a written proposal of “disciplinary action or termination” and then given a chance to respond and, if necessary — and at their own expense — find an attorney to appeal the decision.
“If you proceed with terminations and/or public exposure of terminated employees’ identities, we stand ready to vindicate their rights through all available legal means,” the Feb. 2 letter to FBI acting director Driscoll, U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, and James McHenry, the acting attorney general, states.
When Trump was asked if he had a role in the firings at the DOJ and FBI, he said “no” but immediately followed it up with attacks on the agency and its staff, saying, “We have some very bad people over there.”
Trump added, “If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing because they were very bad.”
The Justice Department memo penned by Bove last week echoed Trump’s sentiments. Bove characterized the Jan. 6 prosecutions as a “grave national injustice” and wrote: “I will not tolerate subversive personnel actions by the previous Administration at any U.S. Attorney’s Office. Too much is at stake. In light of the foregoing, the appropriate course is to terminate these employees.”
Bove, the second highest-ranking legal official in the nation, said he intends to investigate how the Justice Department under the Biden administration tapped prosecutors to work the Jan. 6 cases through the department’s probationary hiring program.
In an email to HuffPost on Monday, Zaid said: “We are undertaking every effort to prevent these illegal purges but the reality is we are preparing more for the legal challenges to hold the government and its officials accountable for the destruction they are waging.”