So far, the real effects of purging anyone in the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors who took part in investigating January 6 or the various criminal, civil or impeachment probes of Donald Trump’s behaviors remains clouded.
Forcing a widespread retributive cleanout of FBI agents strictly over personal loyalty to Trump may well be found illegal eventually, but meanwhile, Team Trump will be assured of its own righteousness of actions — even if that comes at the price of law enforcement readiness and national security. Aren’t these the same forces that Trump wants to stop the crime he sees as rising?
It’s beyond ironic that non-legal dismissals would come in the agencies charged with law enforcement.
From news reports, we know that nine top FBI officials have been ordered to resign or be fired, a dozen or so prosecutors associated with Trump cases are gone and plans for reassignment and reorganization of scores more are underway. The FBI has been told to prepare lists of those who may have been involved, however tangentially, in investigations related to Jan. 6 or Trump-related cases including holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
From all accounts, those lists could reflect thousands of FBI agents across the country who will face dismissal to satisfy Trump’s personal pique. There are consequences:
–Disclosure of the purge by agency acting heads makes testimony offered at Senate confirmation hearings by Kash Patel as head of the FBI and Pam Bondi as Attorney General lies under oath to avoid retaliatory action against staff without specific violation of employee standards. But no Republican senator has yet said so out loud.
–The purge means losing lots of institutional knowledge and specific investigatory work on national security issues both in the FBI and Justice, where units that work on such cases are being targeted. By any measure, we are less safe than we were a month ago.
–The efforts at “cleanup” are bullying, clumsy, and do not reflect standing procedures for dismissals.
Destroying Independence
Besides spotlighting Trump’s continually expanding power grab, what is on display is destruction of any sense of independence of FBI and Justice investigations from the White House’s outwardly political agenda. “I do not believe the current leadership of the Justice Department can trust these FBI employees to assist in implementing the President’s agenda faithfully,” wrote Emil Bove, acting head of Justice.
The dominant questions at the Bondi and Patel confirmation hearings centered on what each would do to maintain independence from the White House at a time when Trump wants to bend law enforcement and intelligence agencies to his will. The answer, we see, is that might trumps right.
Under specific questioning about dismissing FBI personnel, Patel said, “I’m committing to you, senator, and your colleagues that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI.”
Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, gave similar assurances regarding Justice Department employees during her hearing.
What should happen is that Senate committees order Bondi and Patel back and require that they answer for the actions being taken by the agencies that they just swore to keep independent. Either they lied under oath — a crime — or they cannot take the same position going forward and should be rejected as candidates or step aside.
As Trump and Republican senators are fond of repeating, actions have consequences — unless they take the actions, apparently.
Moreover, Trump and his national security team should be challenged on how these moves make us safer as a country, how eliminating a “weaponized” FBI and Justice Department is aided by getting rid of hundreds or thousands of FBI agents and legal staff who were doing their normal professional lives.
Management 101
Apart from all else, why couldn’t Trump wait a week to have his confirmed heads of department in place? What does this tell us about the ability of Team Trump to manage when they are “solving” one problem by creating more problems?
FBI employees are entitled to receive a proposed punishment or discipline action in writing, and a written justification outlining the security rules or standards of employee conduct they are accused of violating. The employee would then have a two-stage opportunity to appeal a recommended firing or other punishment.
If we cannot trust Patel and Bondi about keeping staffing out of Trump’s political retribution campaign, why should we trust any promises for independence on launching or stopping individual investigations, why should we trust whether they are even hearing about national security cases that they should be following? Why should we trust that they recognize how to manage a staff appropriately or to recruit and train a lot of new people quickly?
Agree or not, we can understand that U.S. Attorney US Ed Martin has dismissed roughly 30 federal prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases in the Washington office over the past four years. Those cases are gone now.
But dismissing upwards of 6,000 FBI agents because they carried out investigation assignments or served the court papers to enter Mar-a-Lago? Even if one accepts retribution as a reality, the scale seems ridiculous.
Losing scores of agents from field offices across the country could significantly deplete FBI staffing levels, affect cases unrelated to Trump and create other problems. New agents undergo intensive screening and a specialized 18-week training program before they can be deployed.
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