FBI Lawyers Say DOJ Can’t Be Trusted In Fight Over Jan. 6 List

The taste for retribution by the Trump White House is undeniable, according to one lawyer.

Attorneys for FBI agents who investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told a federal judge on Wednesday that they cannot trust that the Justice Department will not give their names to President Donald Trump purely so he can retaliate against them.

As a civil lawsuit against the DOJ has gone through the court system, the government has been consistently “vague” about what it intends to do with the list of the roughly 5,000 agents who investigated the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, attorney Margaret Donovan told U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb.

Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who was formerly Trump’s personal lawyer, demanded the FBI turn over the names of the agents in February, after Trump signed an executive order he said would end the “weaponization” of the federal government.

In a memo to the Justice Department, Bove echoed the president’s unsubstantiated grievances with the Biden administration and its so-called “unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power.” The only way to resolve that, Bove wrote, was to engage in a “review” of the Justice Department.

“The Department has already started this process but much more work is required. No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about efforts to root out corruption and weaponization,” Bove wrote.