NEW: FBI to Cough Up Names of J6 Investigators

Ask and ye shall receive. Or in this case, order and it shall be given unto you.

Yesterday, the FBI contemplated stonewalling the new leadership at the Department of Justice over their demand for personnel assignments to the January 6 investigation. Some of the executives had already begun advising agents to refuse to answer a mandatory interrogatory from the DoJ, in effect counseling insubordination. 

NBC News reports that the FBI’s attorneys have rethought that approach, and will now cooperate instead:

FBI executives contemplated resisting Justice Department demands that they turn over the names of FBI personnel involved in Capitol riot cases but ultimately decided they must comply with what lawyers deemed a lawful order, current and former FBI officials told NBC News.

Among the options under consideration was to send only the names of managers and senior executives. But the FBI’s office of general counsel decided that the demand by the Trump Justice Department for all the names was legal and that compliance was not optional.

The fact that they thought it was optional at all is itself disqualifying, no? That includes the head of the New York field office:

The Trump administration also began efforts to obtain the names of every FBI employee who worked on Jan. 6 cases, sparking fears of a mass firing that have roiled the bureau. Acting Director Brian Driscoll told employees in a message over the weekend that FBI agents cannot be fired or disciplined without hearings and other due process.

James Dennehy, the head of the New York field office, went even further in an email to staff members challenging the Trump administration. “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle … as good people are being walked out of the FBI,” he wrote. “And others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy.”

It doesn’t matter why they want the data. The leadership of the DoJ and the FBI have the authority to request and review personnel assignments and deployments. If the result is mass firings, those could be litigated separately. 

However, any claim that the DoJ leadership has no right to review personnel assignments and deployments by a subordinate agency is breathtakingly arrogant, though, especially for a law enforcement agency. Oversight on policing by civilian leadership is a core value at all levels of the justice system.

The real problem for current FBI leadership isn’t mass firings, and everyone knows it. The personnel deployments for chasing down January 6 rioters were massive and took attention away from actual nat-sec priorities, as well as child abuse, human trafficking, and other serious public-safety issues. Emil Bove wants to compile this data and use to to compare FBI deployments on these other issues to hold that leadership accountable for their judgment and priorities. That is a completely legitimate function for the DoJ, and any obstruction of that effort by FBI personnel would be insubordination, if not obstruction. 

Presumably, this data will not make Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray look very good, and perhaps not some of the secondary and tertiary leadership at the DoJ and FBI. Or perhaps it will be a nothingburger and nothing will come of it. But given the resistance to these orders, I’d bet on the former rather than the latter.