Two separate groups of FBI employees has sued the US Justice Department, seeking to protect the identities of those agents and others who investigated supporters of Donald Trump for storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Participants in the riots who were pardoned by Trump have taken to social media to identify prosecutors and agents who worked on their cases. Trump pardoned about 1500 supporters hours after taking office on January 20.
The two lawsuits against the Justice Department were both filed ahead of a deadline imposed by Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, ordering FBI leadership to turn over a list of every FBI employee who helped with the January 6 investigation.
Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll told staff the list would encompass thousands of employees, including himself.
FBI leadership on Tuesday turned over the requested list of employees who worked on January 6 cases to the Justice Department, but the list did not contain names, according a person familiar with the matter and an internal FBI email seen by Reuters.
Instead, the FBI provided a list identifying employees only by their "unique employee identifier" as well as "their title at the time of the relevant investigation or prosecution, the office to which they are currently assigned, their role in the relevant investigation or prosecution and the date of last activity related to the investigation or prosecution," the email showed.
It was not clear what the Justice Department planned to do with it. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment.
In the first class-action lawsuit, a group of anonymous FBI employees said the Justice Department was trying to identify agents to be fired or otherwise punished.
"Plaintiffs 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 January 6 convicted felons," the lawsuit says.
According to the lawsuit, as many as 6000 FBI employees participated in some manner in the January 6 investigations.
The second lawsuit, filed by the FBI Agents Association, likewise asked the court to protect employees' identities.
Roughly 140 police officers were assaulted during the January 6 attack, with some sprayed with chemical irritants and others struck with pipes, poles and other weapons.
Bove fired eight top FBI officials and about 17 prosecutors last Friday who worked on criminal cases related to the attack.
Acting Attorney General James McHenry separately terminated more than a dozen federal prosecutors who worked on two now-dismissed criminal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against Trump for his retention of classified documents and his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Over the weekend, FBI employees received a survey asking detailed questions about their roles in the January 6 cases with a Monday afternoon deadline.
Among those January 6 rioters to post online was Shane Jenkins, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for throwing weapons at police officers and smashing a Capitol window with a tomahawk.
"Here are my prosecutors. Let's make sure these people are fired!" Jenkins wrote, naming the FBI agent in charge of his case as well as the judge.
The calls for retribution coincide with a surge in political threats and violence, including scores of menacing and intimidating messages sent to judges and prosecutors in Trump's legal trials.
