The F.B.I. is deepening its purge of employees, forcing out senior agents like a former acting head of the bureau and another whose recent ascent had angered Trump supporters, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as the acting director in the early days of the Trump administration, was among those being told to leave by Friday, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personnel decisions that have not yet been made public.
Also being ousted this week is the head of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office, Steven J. Jensen, these people said. Mr. Jensen had been a target of conservatives because in overseeing the bureau’s domestic terrorism operations section at the time, he played a key role in responding to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The reason for Mr. Driscoll’s ouster was not entirely clear, though he had become an unlikely champion of the bureau after accidentally being catapulted to the director’s chair on Inauguration Day. He resisted demands to turn over the names of F.B.I. agents who had worked on the investigation into the Capitol attack, fighting off what was seen as a possible purge.
The removals are likely to deal another blow to the morale of the agency, which has faced intense scrutiny after conducting investigations that President Trump’s supporters have denounced. Mr. Jensen’s ouster, in particular, is an embarrassing chapter in Kash Patel’s tenure as director given that he had promoted Mr. Jensen and defended the decision on national television.
Other agents being forced out are Walter Giardina and Christopher Meyer, both of whom had worked on cases involving Mr. Trump, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Giardina, whose wife died last month of cancer, had worked on a number of Trump-related investigations, including a case that sent the trade adviser Peter Navarro to prison. The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, has criticized Mr. Giardina for what whistle-blowers have claimed is anti-Trump bias.
Mr. Meyer, an F.B.I. pilot, had recently been singled out on social media by a former agent who outlined his work on a Trump case.
It was not immediately clear if the administration intended to remove additional F.B.I. employees, or if all the men were eligible to retire.
A bureau spokeswoman at the Washington field office declined to comment. The F.B.I.’s national press office also declined to comment.
After Mr. Patel was confirmed as director, Mr. Driscoll became the assistant director of the F.B.I.’s Critical Incident Response Group, which oversees the bureau’s elite hostage rescue team, among other responsibilities. His predecessor was also pushed out.
In a message informing his colleagues of his departure, Mr. Driscoll acknowledged that he had received little explanation.
“Last night, I was informed that tomorrow will be my last day in the F.B.I.,” the message read. “I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I currently have no answers. No cause has been articulated at this time.”
As assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, Mr. Jensen held a crucial position, overseeing many of the agents who investigated cases touching on Mr. Trump, but his ascension had drawn increasing criticism from the president’s supporters.
On Thursday, Mr. Jensen notified his employees in an email that his employment had been “terminated” and that he intended “to meet this challenge like any other I have faced in this organization, with professionalism, integrity and dignity.”
In April, Mr. Patel named him to run the Washington field office, the second-largest field office in the country.
The next month, Mr. Patel defended the selection.
“I want the American public to realize what we did,” Mr. Patel told the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
“That man was in a position where he literally fought back against the machine who was saying we want to politicize this event,” Mr. Patel said, referring to Jan. 6. “We want to politicize this event. And at the end of the day, remember, Maria, there’s a chain of command here. So you can fight back your chain of command to a certain degree before they fire you, and Steve Jensen and other folks were promoted because they embody what the American public demands of F.B.I. agents.”
Mr. Jensen was scheduled to speak at a news conference at the Justice Department on Thursday morning, but he did not appear, with a deputy speaking in his place.
Asked about his absence, the U.S. attorney for Washington, Jeanine Pirro, declined to answer whether he had been fired. “I’m not going to talk about politics today; I’m talking about crime,” she said.
The fresh ousters reflect, in part, a long-running effort by senior Trump administration officials to dismiss agents and prosecutors who worked on cases related to the president. Those have included the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia during his first term, the investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office, the investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the investigations of rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Critics of the moves say the ousters at all levels of the agency amount to little more than retaliation against agents who were assigned to or oversaw politically sensitive cases that Mr. Trump and other conservatives dislike.
In June, an agent whose only apparent connection to politically sensitive cases was his friendship with a former counterintelligence agent known as a Trump critic was pushed out of the bureau. That agent, Michael Feinberg, said after his departure that the agency had begun “to decay” under Mr. Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino.
The F.B.I. also reassigned several female agents in supervisory positions who knelt during demonstrations protesting police violence in the District of Columbia in 2020.
During his confirmation hearing in January, Mr. Patel testified before Congress that he would not carry out right-wing grievances.
“And as I told you in your office, I have no interest, no desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Mr. Patel said. “There will be no politicization at the F.B.I. There will be no retributive actions taken by any F.B.I., should I be confirmed as the F.B.I. director.”
Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
William K. Rashbaum is a Times reporter covering municipal and political corruption, the courts and broader law enforcement topics in New York.
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