Trump administration fires ex-acting FBI director seen as champion of rank-and-file staff
The FBI is firing the former acting director who led the bureau at the start of the Trump administration and refused to turn over a list of agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
Brian Driscoll, who has since returned to a career post at the bureau, has been asked to leave by Friday, a source familiar confirmed to The Hill.
Driscoll has been viewed as a champion of the bureau’s rank-and-file staff. He declined to turn over a list of the thousands of FBI agents who worked on investigations into those that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The request to do so sparked a lawsuit from FBI staff, who feared that the list would be used to target agents and could lead to retribution.
The FBI declined to comment.
Driscoll’s removal appears to be part of a wider purge.
Other outlets reported Thursday that Steve Jensen, the acting director in charge of the Washington Field Office, was asked to leave as well as Walter Giardina, an agent who worked on a number of cases involving President Trump. Giardina worked for special counsel Robert Mueller and aided in the prosecution of Peter Navarro, a White House aide at the time who is now an adviser to Trump on trade.
Giardina has been a target of Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who asked the FBI and the Justice Department to turn over a number of documents about his work.
The move is likely to hurt morale at the FBI, which has seen the firing of a number of career leaders.
The Trump administration in February forced out the five highest career positions at the FBI along with the heads of numerous field offices, including the then-leader in Washington, D.C.
Driscoll pushed back when asked to turn over the list of agents to Emil Bove, then serving in the No. 3 role at the Justice Department.
“We understand that this request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts,” Driscoll wrote in an email to staff at the time.
“I am one of those employees.”
Driscoll has been with the FBI for over 20 years, recently serving as the head of the Newark Field Office. He also previously served on the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team.
Known internally as Drizz, his pushback on the Trump administration sparked numerous memes in his honor, with one depicting him as a saint and another asking “What Would Drizz Do?”
