President Trump declared on Friday that he would soon “surgically” fire unidentified F.B.I. agents he claimed were corrupt, intensifying concerns about the possibility of a purge of federal law enforcement officials in the face of a court fight over agents and employees who had helped investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Hours earlier, a judge ordered his administration to keep confidential a list it had created of thousands of F.B.I. agents and employees who had worked on inquiries related to the Jan. 6 attack.
The administration told the F.B.I. to compile that list last week. Mr. Trump, asked at a news conference on Friday whether he would fire all agents on it, said he would not — but quickly qualified his remarks to say that “some of them” would be terminated.
“I’ll fire some of them because some of them were corrupt,” he said. “I have no doubt about that. I got to know a lot about that business, that world. I got to know a lot about that world. And we had some corrupt agents, and those people are gone, or they will be gone and it will be done quickly and very surgically.”
The dispute over the administration’s plans grew out of a demand by Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, that the bureau compile and turn over a comprehensive list of the law enforcement officials who had played any role in investigating Jan. 6.
The investigation became the largest in the Justice Department’s history, leading to nearly 1,600 people being charged or convicted of crimes in connection with the riot and involving the work of thousands of F.B.I. employees.
Two groups of anonymous F.B.I. agents and employees filed lawsuits earlier this week to block any release of the identities. The administration consented to the text of a temporary restraining order on Friday barring the entire government from making the list public.
Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for President Trump, has been helping oversee the Trump administration effort to remake federal law enforcement.
That has included firing or sidelining top career employees across the Justice Department and the F.B.I., and dismissing prosecutors who participated in the criminal cases against Mr. Trump — one of which was for his attempt to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election — or against the rioters.
At a hearing on Thursday before Judge Jia M. Cobb of the Federal District Court in Washington, a lawyer for the Justice Department said the department’s leadership had no intention of making the list public.
He said the list would be used for an internal study, citing an executive order Mr. Trump issued on his first day in office demanding a Justice Department review of what the administration described as the “weaponization” of law enforcement under President Biden.
Even though Mr. Trump’s order states that it would search for “any instances” of improperly politicized actions, its very language appeared to provide the conclusion he would want findings to support. It declared as fact that the Biden administration had engaged in “a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents” by initiating investigations and prosecutions that “appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
Against that backdrop, lawyers for the F.B.I. employees noted that other names of national security officials targeted by Mr. Trump and his allies had appeared in official documents and news reports. They argued that any release or leak of the list would put the employees and their families at risk.
On the night of his inauguration, Mr. Trump granted clemency to all the nearly 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6 riot, including people who were serving long sentences for attacking police officers.
One of several lawyers for F.B.I. agents, Norman Eisen, hailed the restraining order as a victory.
“The order that the judge entered is a significant milestone in stopping the administration’s assault on American law enforcement,” he said.
While Mr. Bove demanded a list of every F.B.I. employee who had worked on any of the Jan. 6 cases and a description of what they had done, the list turned over on Tuesday by the acting director of the F.B.I., Brian J. Driscoll Jr., substituted employee identification numbers for names.
In agreeing to the restraining order, the Justice Department informed Judge Cobb in a court filing that the F.B.I. had also provided “a record that pairs the unique identifiers on the list at issue in this case with the corresponding names of the F.B.I. personnel.”
The order to keep those identities confidential binds the entire government while litigation unfolds over whether Judge Cobb should issue an injunction. But the government has the option to give two days’ notice that it intends to release names of F.B.I. personnel on the list, which would create time for further litigation first.
Natalie Bara, the president of the F.B.I. Agents Association, said her group, which is one of the plaintiffs, welcomed “the court’s recognition of the serious concerns at stake.”
At the news conference on Friday, Mr. Trump also spoke warmly about his nominee for F.B.I. director, Kash Patel. Mr. Patel rose in Republican circles by attacking the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence investigation into the nature of links between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
After reiterating that some F.B.I. officials “are very corrupt,” Mr. Trump said: “We’re going to bring back the reputation of the F.B.I. Kash Patel is going to do a great job, and we’re going to bring back the reputation of the F.B.I., which has been hurt very badly.”
The order barring disclosure of the identities of F.B.I. agents who worked on Jan. 6-related investigations is part of a growing constellation of temporary blocks on aspects of Mr. Trump’s policies. Dozens of lawsuits challenging the legality of some of his actions have been filed against the administration since it took office in January, and the judicial orders are intended to create time to litigate those cases.
Judges have also issued restraining orders or injunctions involving the administration’s attempt to impose a blanket freeze on trillions of dollars in grants and loans; end birthright citizenship for children born on American soil to undocumented immigrants; move transgender female inmates to male prisons; and give access to a Treasury Department payment system to associates of the billionaire Elon Musk working on his government-slashing project.
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