The Trump administration has reportedly told at least six top officials at the FBI to resign immediately or they will be fired.
Senior agents were sent an email informing them they would be dismissed “from the rolls of the F.B.I.” as soon as Monday morning, the New York Times reported.
Spencer Evans, the Special Agent in Charge of the Las Vegas FBI field office, is reportedly one of the officials who was forced to retire.
“I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock,” said Evans in a letter to his underlings.
“All, I was informed by FBIHQ today that executive leadership at the Department of Justice plans to dismiss me from the rolls of the FBI, along with several other FBI executives, as soon as Monday morning. I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock. Not knowing what tomorrow or the weekend will bring, I wanted to make sure you heard from me directly, as I imagine word will start to spread quickly, and I might not have another opportunity to communicate with you again.
Regardless of what happens to me, I want you to know I have every confidence in the men and women of the FBI, and that goes double for the Las Vegas Division. It has been the honor of my career to serve with and among you. I am inspired by the outstanding work you have done and will continue to do on behalf of the American People.
FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin reported on X that in 2021, Evans denied all religious accommodations for agents who resisted taking the experimental COVID injections.
Some of the fired executives were apparently notified while Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to be the next FBI director, was answering questions during his confirmation hearing in the Senate Thursday.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Patel said he was unaware of any plans by the Trump administration to punish FBI personnel.
“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” asked Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
“I am not aware of that, senator,” Patel replied.
The top FBI officials asked to leave were at the executive assistant director level or special agent in charge level, including “those who oversee cyber, national security and criminal investigations, according to CNN.
The FBI Agents Association officials met with FBI director nominee Kash Patel in recent weeks to raise those concerns, urging him to protect agents who did their work investigating violent crimes with oversight from judges, FBI supervisors and Justice Department lawyers, according to people briefed on the meeting. Patel listened but offered no reassurances, the people briefed on the meeting said.
The Trump administration has allegedly been focused on pushing out leaders who were promoted by disgraced former FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Wray announced his early retirement from the Bureau on January 12, after Trump promised to fire him, and then-Acting Director Paul Abbate retired on Inauguration Day.
Trump named Brian Driscoll to serve as acting director in one of his first moves after he was sworn in. Tom Ferguson, a former agent and aide to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), arrived at the FBI headquarters to work as a policy adviser shortly after Trump took office.
Driscoll “most recently served as the commander of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and Critical Incident Response Group’s (CIRG) Tactical Section chief,” according to a press release.
The purge comes after the FBI raided hundreds of Trump supporters who trespassed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Mar-a-Lago over Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
According to CNN, the hundreds of FBI agents assigned to those cases are now “bracing for the possibility that they could be forced out or punished, similar to what has happened to dozens of career Justice Department lawyers.”
Some agents say the criticism belies the fact that FBI agents and supervisors can’t choose which assignments they are given as part of their job. The FBI workforce is broadly conservative, and many agents initially had qualms about being assigned to the Capitol attack and Trump cases, viewing the prosecutions as heavy-handed, people familiar with the matter say. Some Justice Department lawyers leading January 6 cases complained that they believed agents sometimes slow-walked some of their work.
According to Seraphin, he’s hearing from multiple agents inside the FBI that the Acting Deputy Attorney General is ordering the names of “all case participants AND all case managers of January 6 prosecutions.”
The acting deputy AG is Emil Bove, Trump’s former personal criminal attorney.
Seraphin explained that in “plain terms,” Bove is seeking the names of “those who did analytical support, the supervisors, and the case agents.”
Only a few agents, including Seraphin and former special agents like Steve Friend, Marcus Allen and Garret O’Boyle had the integrity to call out their superiors and refuse to carry out unreasonable orders. All of the whistleblowers paid dearly for making their “protected disclosures,” and were suspended without pay for months before losing their jobs and security clearances.
In December of 2022, Friend told American Greatness there were hundreds of other potential whistleblowers working in the FBI, but they needed to feel that it was safe to come forward.
In a letter to Evans a year earlier, Seraphin expressed shock and disappointment that his exemption to the COVID jab was denied, presciently noting that the Bureau had “decided to be on the wrong side of future court decisions.”
“This whole experience has been a shocking and eye-opening way to see how quickly the men and women in management abandoned the principles of our core values for political expediency and the safety of a paycheck and pension,” the whistleblower wrote. “I pity those of you who expect to hide behind emails masquerading as ‘policy.'”
Seraphin said the FBI leadership forcing the unjust policy on their agents should feel deeply ashamed, especially since all agents are required to visit the Holocaust Museum as a reminder that tyranny is only achieved with the compliance of “good Germans” just following orders.
“This evil path you are on should keep you all awake at night,” Seraphin concluded.
