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WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI agents who participated in investigations related to President Donald Trump have sued over Justice Department efforts to develop a list of employees involved in those inquiries that they fear could be a precursor to mass firings.
Two lawsuits, filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington on behalf of anonymous agents, demand an immediate halt to the collection and potential dissemination of names of investigators who participated in probes of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. One of the complaints says agents were also asked to fill out surveys about their participation in the investigation into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The suits mark an escalation in a high-stake dispute that burst into public view on Friday with revelations that the Justice Department had demanded from the FBI the names, offices and titles of all employees involved in Jan. 6 investigations so that officials could evaluate whether any personnel action was merited. Thousands of FBI employees were also asked over the weekend to fill out an in-depth questionnaire about their participation in those probes, a step they worry could lead to termination.
Responding to the Justice Department’s request, the FBI turned over personnel details of several thousand employees but identified them only through their unique identifier code rather than by name, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter and internal communications seen by The Associated Press.
The prospect of demotions, discipline or even termination for career agents has unnerved officials inside the FBI.
Natalie Bara, the president of the FBI Agents Association, which also sued, told reporters Tuesday that one agent who had spent hours recovering body parts from the Potomac River following last week’s plane crash “had to return to the office — not to debrief, not to work on cases, but to fill out a mandatory survey on any involvement in investigations related to Jan. 6.”
“This is the reality for our agents today. They’re being scrutinized, placed on lists, and facing the possibility of losing their jobs,” she said.
The scrutiny of career agents is highly unusual given that rank-and-file FBI agents do not select the cases they are assigned to work on, do not historically switch positions or receive any sort of discipline because of their participation in matters seen as politically sensitive cases and especially because there’s been no evidence any FBI agents or lawyers who investigated or prosecuted the cases engaged in misconduct.
Trump, dating back to his first term as president, has long been furious at the FBI and Justice Department and sought to bend federal law enforcement to his will.
He was investigated as president by agents examining potential ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, and then after leaving the White House, faced new criminal inquiries into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of top-secret documents. His efforts to overturn election results and his retention of those documents both resulted in indictments that were dismissed after he won the presidency in November.
The agents who brought Tuesday’s two lawsuits are not identified by name and are instead referred to as anonymous “John and Jane Does.”
They say they were told on Sunday either to fill out surveys about their involvement in the Jan. 6 or Mar-a-Lago investigations or that their supervisors would do it for them and that their responses would be “forwarded to upper management,” says one of the lawsuits. The complaint says it was filed on behalf of nine employees, but the class of plaintiffs could grow to include “at least 6,000 current and former” FBI workers.
“Plaintiffs assert that the purpose for this list is to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer other adverse employment action. Plaintiffs reasonably fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit notes that Trump on the campaign trail “repeatedly stated that he would personify ‘the vengeance’ or ‘the retribution,’ for those whom he called ‘political hostages,’ for their actions during the Jan. 6 attack.”
The agents contend that “the very act of compiling lists of persons who worked on matters that upset Donald Trump is retaliatory in nature, intended to intimidate FBI agents and other personnel and to discourage them from reporting any future malfeasance and by Donald Trump and his agents.”
The complaint also cites the Justice Department’s firing last week of prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which brought two indictments against Trump, as proof that the effort to compile the list is rooted in a desire for retribution.
“Donald Trump has made repeated public pronouncements of his intent to exact revenge upon persons he perceives to be disloyal to him by simply executing their duties in investigating acts incited by him and persons loyal to him,” the complaint says. “Whatever the Trump administration believes about Plaintiffs’ political affiliation, it clearly believes that persons who were involved in the investigation and prosecution of Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases are insufficiently politically affiliated with Donald Trump to be entitled to retain their employment.”
Another group of agents argued in a second lawsuit Tuesday that releasing their names publicly would subject them to dangerous threats and harassment. The complaint includes a screenshot of a social media post from the former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio calling for the arrest of an agent who testified in his Jan. 6 case after his recent pardon from Trump.
“It is clear that the threatened disclosure is a prelude to an unlawful purge of the FBI solely driven by the Trump Administration’s vengeful and political motivations,” Chris Mattei, one of the lawyers who filed that lawsuit on behalf of the FBI Agents Association, said in a statement. “Releasing the names of these agents would ignite a firestorm of harassment towards them and their families and it must be stopped immediately.”
The lawsuit, also filed by the State Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonpartisan organization that says it fights “election sabotage and autocracy,” seeks a temporary restraining order that would prevent the Justice Department from releasing the names on the list. Other lawyers participating in the case include prominent Washington attorney Mark Zaid, who routinely represents government officials.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
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Eric Tucker And Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press