The Department of Justice and lawyers representing a group of FBI agents involved in investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack will reconvene on Friday, after the two groups failed to reach an agreement Thursday that would prevent the DOJ from publicly releasing the identities of any bureau employees currently under review for potential disciplinary action or firings.
The anonymous group of FBI agents is seeking a temporary restraining order to keep the FBI from releasing the names on a list the bureau collected as part of what the plaintiffs’ lawsuit says is the agency’s plan to engage in “potential vigilante action” to retaliate against government employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases or Donald Trump’s classified documents case.
After several hours of grueling back and forth during a hearing Thursday, the Justice Department’s attorney, Jeremy Simon, was able to commit that the DOJ itself would not further disseminate the list pending further proceedings in the case — but that answer did not satisfy either the judge or defense attorneys because Simon said he could not ensure that other parties in the government would not be able to release the list in some form.
Simon noted he had no reason to believe the list has been shared beyond DOJ leadership, and ultimately was able to relay from a superior that there’s been no “official” dissemination of the list after it was handed over by the FBI.
“What does that mean?” pressed U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, questioning whether the list could have been unofficially leaked outside of the department.
Simon said he had no reason to believe it had been leaked but couldn’t commit under oath that the list wouldn’t be shared or released by a separate government entity outside of DOJ.
“You represent the government,” Judge Cobb said. “The White House wants this information. Does the government have present intent to publicly release names of FBI agents that worked on Jan. 6 cases?”
“People who have the list don’t have present intent,” Simon replied.
Simon further said he had difficulty getting approval from superiors about language they could agree upon to further bind the government from releasing the list, citing other major civil rulings that the department has faced in just the past several hours.
The parties are due back in court on Friday, unless they are able to reach an out-of-court agreement that would restrict the government from releasing the list pending further proceedings.
Earlier Thursday, attorneys for the agents argued that the release of the list would have serious consequences.
“Our argument is that the threat to national security is so extreme that we cannot risk letting it happen first, and then trying to put it back together,” said attorney for the agents Margaret Donovan in arguing for the temporary restraining order.
“I appreciate that, and I’m sympathetic to that argument,” Judge Cobb said. “A fear of something happening is not sufficient, even if — you know — the fear is a serious one.”
Lawyers representing the plaintiffs warned that the Trump Administration and DOGE head Elon Musk have demonstrated a willingness to publicly name officials they’ve accused of wrongdoing, such as the 51 former intelligence officials who wrote a letter about the Hunter Biden laptop and were later stripped of their security clearances in a Day-1 executive order by President Donald Trump.
“We have seen Elon Musk, working for the so-called DOGE agency, release names of individuals in public service. We have seen Jan. 6 pardonees very active on social media around the time of the survey, anticipating that the names would be released,” Donovan said. “We have a good faith reason to believe that those names may get out.”
In a court filing submitted Thursday morning, the Justice Department urged the judge hearing the case to reject the plaintiffs’ request to impose a restraining order blocking any public release of the list.
DOJ attorneys argued in the filing that the motion for the restraining order is based largely on speculation and that the FBI agents have failed to show they face any imminent threats in connection with the list.
Trump pleaded not guilty in 2023 to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, and, separately, to charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The classified documents case was dismissed last year by a federal judge, and both cases were subsequently dropped following Trump’s reelection in November due to a longstanding DOJ policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
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