FBI forces out more leaders, including ex-director who fought Trump
demand for Jan. 6 agents' names
[August 08, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is forcing out more senior officials,
including a former acting director who resisted Trump administration
demands to turn over the names of agents who participated in Jan. 6
Capitol riot investigations and the head of the bureau's Washington
field office, according to people familiar with the matter and internal
communications seen by The Associated Press.
The basis for the ouster of Brian Driscoll, who led the bureau in the
turbulent weeks after President Donald Trump's inauguration in January,
were not immediately clear, but Driscoll's final day at the FBI is
Friday, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the
personnel move by name and spoke to the AP on the condition of
anonymity.
“I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for
which I have no answers,” Driscoll wrote in a message to colleagues. “No
cause has been articulated at this time.”
Another high-profile termination is Steven Jensen, who for months had
been the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office,
one of the bureau's largest and busiest. He confirmed in a message to
colleagues Thursday he had been told he was being fired effective
Friday.
“I intend to meet this challenge like any other I have faced in this
organization, with professionalism, integrity and dignity,” Jensen wrote
in an email.
Jensen did not say whether he had been given a reason, but his
appointment to the job in April was sharply criticized by some Trump
supporters because he had overseen a domestic terrorism section after
the 2021 riot at the Capitol. The FBI has characterized that attack, in
which the Republican president's supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid
to halt the certification of election results after he lost to Democrat
Joe Biden, as an act of domestic terrorism.
People familiar with the matter identified another agent being pushed
out as Walter Giardina, who has drawn scrutiny from Sen. Chuck Grassley,
the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Giardina's
prior investigations have included the one into Trump aide Peter
Navarro, who was convicted of contempt of Congress.
Spokespeople for the FBI declined to comment Thursday. The FBI Agents
Association said in a statement that it was concerned by reports of the
firings of senior leaders and that it was reviewing all legal options to
defend its members. The group said firing agents without due process
would make the country less safe.
“There is a review process when employment actions are taken against
agents. The process was established so that the FBI could remain
independent and apolitical. FBI leadership committed — both publicly and
directly to FBIAA — that they would abide by that process. We urge them
to honor that commitment and follow the law,” the statement said.
A broader personnel purge
The news about Driscoll and Jensen comes amid a much broader personnel
purge that has unfolded over the last several months under the
leadership of FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino.
Numerous senior officials including top agents in charge of big-city
field offices have been pushed out of their jobs, and some agents have
been subjected to polygraph exams, moves that former officials say have
roiled the workforce and contributed to angst.
Driscoll is a veteran agent who worked international counterterrorism
investigations in New York and had commanded the bureau’s Hostage Rescue
Team. He had most recently served as acting director in charge of the
FBI's Critical Incident Response Group, which deploys resources to
crisis situations.
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The seal of The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seen on the
Headquarters in Washington, Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis
Magana, File)
Driscoll was named acting director in January to replace Christopher
Wray and served in the position as Patel’s nomination was pending.
Driscoll made headlines after he and Robert Kissane, the then-deputy
director, resisted Trump administration demands for a list of agents
who participated in investigations into the Jan. 6 riot. Many within
the FBI had seen that request as a precursor for mass firings,
particularly in light of separate moves to fire members of special
counsel Jack Smith’s team that prosecuted Trump, reassign senior
career Justice Department officials and force out prosecutors on
Jan. 6 cases and top FBI executives.
The Justice Department's request
Emil Bove, the then-senior Justice Department official who made the
request and was last week confirmed for a seat on a federal appeals
court, wrote a memo at the time accusing the FBI’s top leaders of
“insubordination" for resisting his requests “to identify the core
team” responsible for Jan. 6 investigations.
He said the requests were meant to “permit the Justice Department to
conduct a review of those particular agents’ conduct pursuant to
Trump’s executive order” on “weaponization” in the Biden
administration.
Responding to Bove’s request, the FBI provided personnel details
about several thousand employees, identifying them by unique
employee numbers rather than by names.
In his farewell note, Driscoll told colleagues that it was “the
honor of my life to serve alongside each of you.”
He wrote: “Our collective sacrifice for those we serve is, and will
always be, worth it. I regret nothing. You are my heroes and I
remain in your debt.”
Agents demoted, reassigned and pushed out
The FBI has moved under Patel’s watch to aggressively demote,
reassign or push out agents seen as being out of favor with bureau
leadership or the Trump administration.
In April, for instance, the bureau reassigned several agents who
were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in
Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands
of Minneapolis police officers.
Numerous special agents in charge of field offices have been told to
retire, resign or accept reassignment.
Another agent, Michael Feinberg, has said publicly that he was told
to resign or accept a demotion amid scrutiny from leadership of his
friendship with Peter Strzok, a lead agent on the FBI’s Trump-Russia
investigation who was fired by the Justice Department in 2018
following revelations that he had exchanged negative text messages
about Trump with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page. Feinberg said he
resigned.
____
Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington
contributed to this report.
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