BY ERIC TUCKER AND ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trump administration officials are moving to fire FBI agents engaged in investigations involving President Donald Trump in the coming days, two people familiar with the plans said Friday.
It was not clear how many agents might be affected, though scores of investigators were involved in various inquiries touching Trump. Officials acting at the direction of the administration have been working to identify individual employees who participated in politically sensitive investigations for possible termination, said the people who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The terminations would be a major blow to the historic independence from the White House of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency and would reflect the Trump’s determination to bend the law enforcement and intelligence community to his will. It’s part of a startling pattern of retribution waged on federal government employees, following the forced ousters of a group of senior FBI executives earlier this week as well as a mass firing by the Justice Department of prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team who investigated Trump.
The FBI Agents Association called the planned firings “outrageous actions by acting officials are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents.
[Continue reading below]“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 association said in a statement.
The Justice Department also brought charges against more than 1,500 Trump supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, though Trump on his first day in office granted clemency to all of them — including the ones convicted of violent crimes — through pardons, sentence commutations and dismissals of indictment.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment, and an FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
The firings would be done over the will of the acting FBI director Brian Driscoll, who has indicated that he objects to the idea, the people said.
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