Names of FBI agents must be turned over today to Trump's “Justice” Department
Up to 6,000 agents could get fired and left to pick up the pieces of their lives
By Mike Sorrell
A Musk-Trump coup to take full control of the federal government is under way in Washington. One element of the coup is the attempt by President Trump’s '"Justice" Department to tear down the FBI, the federal government’s lead investigative law enforcement agency.
No later than today, the FBI must turn over the names of everyone in the FBI who was involved in any way in the largest case in FBI history – the Trump-led insurrection that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Some 6,000 FBI agents and other agency employees could face termination after a review is conducted of every person on the list. Each was assigned in some way to investigate, charge and help prosecute more than 1,500 rioters, including some who viciously attacked the 140 law enforcement officers who helped quell the riot.
Trump has pardoned all the insurrectionists and set them free from prisons and jails.
Now he appears ready to wreck the lives of good people who work for the FBI. Anyone who is fired will face financial hardship and, if names of FBI agents are released, could have to look over their shoulders in fear that a now-free insurrectionist could, like Trump, seek his or her own form of revenge. Former agents could get shot. Their homes, with their families inside, could get bombed. This is not hyperbole. The nation is getting turned upside down, and some bad people are shaking loose.
There are many other aspects of the Musk-Trump coup going on today, but my narrow focus here is to point out that, while the FBI as an institution is under attack, each of the potentially endangered FBI agents is a person, not just a name on somebody’s hit list.
Years ago, a neighbor of mine worked for the FBI. He is now retired, and I’ve lost touch with him. Thinking back, though, it seems to me he was – and is – a typical FBI agent. A bit stand-offish, perhaps. Calm. No nonsense. A good neighbor.
He was an athlete in high school and went to college and got a degree in one of the helping professions.
He joined the Marine Corps and was in combat in Vietnam.
After that, he became an FBI agent. He told me he became an agent because he decided the best way to help people was to get bad guys off the streets.
He worked in high-crime cities as a young FBI agent. Risky assignments. As his career progressed, he became a supervisor of other agents.
Outside of his job, he was a typical neighbor with a wife and children. One child was a classmate of our daughter, and they were on the same sports teams. The other went to college and became a military officer. His wife was a teacher.
The couple, like almost everyone else in the neighborhood, had a monthly mortgage to meet, and they saved money to send their children to college.
Each of the thousands of FBI agents now twisting in the wind, waiting to see what fate befalls them because of a president’s anger, is a lot like my former neighbor. Each is just doing his or her job and living the American dream.
Frank Figliuzzi, a retired FBI agent and administrator, said on MSNBC Monday night that he has talked in recent days with numerous agents around the country. They fear their lives will come crashing down around them. They need their jobs to put food on the table, to make their mortgage payments, to send their kids to school. They fear they will get thrown out of the agency before they qualify for a pension. Even if the person fights termination in court, the outcome of the case would not come for a year or two.
Any man or woman willing to take bad guys off the streets – and who risks his or her life to do so – deserves better than to get jerked around, faced with financial ruin and put in potential danger because they did their job.
Americans need to speak out against a president with a twisted psyche and his posse of billionaires, led by Elon Musk, who want to target the good guys rather than the bad while wrecking democracy.