A group of FBI special agents facing political retribution over their work on the criminal cases against Donald Trump have sued the Department of Justice. Notably, their names aren’t anywhere on the lawsuit.
On Tuesday, nine FBI employees identified only as “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” filed a class action lawsuit against the Justice Department hoping to stop the agency from firing them this week — or taking other actions that could put a target on their backs.
The agents, who worked on Jan. 6-related criminal cases and the classified documents case, warned that by publishing their names, Trump’s allies would be creating what’s tantamount to a hit list for pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionists seeking revenge.
The agents “reasonably fear that all or parts of this list might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons,” the lawsuit reads.
Agents said they see this as a White House strategy meant to limit the FBI from investigating potential criminal behavior from the president himself.
“The very act of compiling lists of persons who worked on matters that upset Donald Trump is retaliatory in nature, intended to intimidate FBI agents and other personnel, and to discourage them from reporting any future malfeasance and by Donald Trump and his agents,” the lawsuit states.
The litigation threatens to turn nearly half of the FBI’s 13,000 special agents against the president, with the lawsuit stating that the lawyers “intend to represent a class of at least 6,000 current and former FBI agents and employees who participated in some manner in the investigation and prosecution of crimes and abuses of power by Donald Trump, or by those acting at his behest.”
Only 15 days in, the Trump administration is already mired in legal challenges over its efforts to tear away birthright citizenship, freeze federal funding and give billionaire Elon Musk unprecedented access to government spending and employees’ private information.
This lawsuit from current FBI agents marks a singular turn in the nation’s history, driving a wedge between the commander-in-chief and the country’s most powerful law enforcement agency that falls within his purview.
While the FBI tends to lean conservative, the institution has long guarded itself as nonpolitical — a point that the lawsuit stresses when noting that agents “are not free to refuse assignments based on their political or personal preferences.”
However, the lawsuit stands apart by directly addressing the reality of the situation the FBI now finds itself in: answering to a man who, until recently, faced criminal charges for trying to remain in power after losing the 2020 election and retain “Top Secret” information after leaving the White House — only to turn his ire toward the very investigators who tried to uphold the rule of law.
“A recurring theme in the trials of the Jan. 6 defendants is that they appeared at the Capitol, and engaged in violent action at the urging and direct request of Donald Trump. It is also undisputed that while Donald Trump was keenly aware of the violence taking place at the Capitol on that day, for hours he did nothing to intercede or persuade the Jan. 6 rioters to cease their activity,” the lawsuit states.
It goes on to note how “information obtained during the investigation of the Jan. 6 attack also established that Mr. Trump was an active participant in the planning of the attack on the Capitol, and of the coordinated effort by some members of Congress to evade certification of the election results.”
The 16-page complaint details how a significant number of FBI agents — who either investigated the 2021 Capitol riot or Trump’s stash of classified material at his private residence — ”have been informed that they are likely to be terminated in the very near future (the week of February 3-9, 2025) for such activity.”
The lawsuit also included an image of the internal survey making the rounds at the FBI, one that demands to know if an agent “participated in investigation(s) or prosecution(s) of events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.” The questionnaire also forces employees to detail whether they took part in “analytical support,” “approved” documents in a case file, made arrests, were “assigned as co-case agent,” interviewed witnesses, collected evidence, testified at trial, or even “responded” to a lead set by another FBI office.
The manner of questioning also indicates that political agents from the Trump administration want supervisors to rat out their own case agents, asking whether “your employee participated” in these Jan. 6-related investigations.
