According to the court, the Justice Department publicly states that President Donald Trump's administration was considering investigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters, when FBI agents were considering investigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol. I agreed to refrain from identifying it. Submitted on Friday.
The FBI employee's lawyer filed two lawsuits on Tuesday, halting the collection and potential spread of agents' names.
Many within the FBI feared that the Department of Justice would use a list of names to fire masses.
Trump appeared to be appearing at the White House on Friday to increase his chances.
Asked whether his administration would ask for the firefighters involved in the January 6 investigation, he said “will fire some of them because some of them are corrupt,” and the process was It will be done quickly and “surgically.”
There is no evidence that the FBI agent or attorney who investigated or prosecuted the case has done anything wrong.
Fearing safety in the event of their identities released, FBI agents' lawyers have asked US District Jia Cobb to issue an order temporarily banning the federal government from publicly identifying them. Ta.
The hearing on that request began on Thursday and was scheduled to resume on Friday, but government lawyers asked the judge to cancel it and sign off. Their agreement Instead.
In a court filing Friday, the Justice Department said it would not publish a list of agents “directly or indirectly” “directly or indirectly” before the government rules over the merits of the lawsuit.
Thousands of FBI employees who worked in the January 6 case were asked to complete a detailed survey. Upon request, the FBI provided Justice Department officials with personnel details on the thousands of employees.
The department initially identified agents by employee number rather than by name. However, according to court filings Friday, the FBI has since taken over records of pairing numbers with corresponding names.
Attorneys for the Department of Justice and FBI agents spent several hours inside and outside Cobb's court on Thursday, but were unable to reach an agreement by the end of the day.
The Justice Department sets an FBI deadline on Tuesday, providing a list of all current and former FBI agents who worked in the January 6th criminal investigation, allowing officials to determine whether they should be disciplined. did.
These FBI agents are likely to be threatened and harassed if their identity is publicly exposed, their lawyers argued.
The FBI agent's lawyer said if the name is published it would cause irreparable harm.
They noted that individual employee names from other federal agencies have already spread across social media, targeting online harassment.
“The risks to these agents are horrifying,” said Norman Eisen, the plaintiff's lawyer.
in Court filinggovernment lawyers argued that the plaintiff's request for a temporary restraining order is “completely based on speculation.”
“The plaintiffs cannot point to anything that suggests that the government intends to publish the list in this case,” they wrote. “On the contrary, the department and FBI administrators have repeatedly emphasized that the purpose of the list is to conduct internal reviews rather than exposing dedicated special agents to national insults and ridiculous laughter. Masu.”
In a memo on Wednesday, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Emil Bove said the agent “simply followed the order and performed his duties in an ethical way” was investigated as he investigated the Capitol attacks, but said there was no risk of termination. Ta. However, the memo also did not provide relief to agents who were deemed “acted with corrupt or partisan intentions.”
