The assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office reportedly has put his people on notice that they’re under attack, in a “battle” in which “good people … are being targeted.”Not by al Qaeda or ISIS. By the president of the United States.
Assistant Director in Charge James Dennehy alerted the New York office about the threat after the Justice Department on Friday ordered the FBI to generate a list of everyone in the FBI who had any role in the Jan. 6 investigations and prosecutions. Some top officials have already been dismissed.
Fun fact: The Justice Department’s first Jan. 6 arrests were Jan. 8, 2021, under Trump.FBI employees have until today at 3pm eastern time to fill out an insane questionnaire about any work they may have done. The questionnaire is mandatory for management but not for others.Dennehy, a former Marine, responded with an email telling the New York office, “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy.”
The removals of nine FBI leaders under Pres. Donald Trump, Dennehy wrote, have created “fear and angst within the F.B.I. ranks.”Dennehy also said he’s not going anywhere: “Time for me to dig in.”
And he praised FBI officials leading the defense against Trump’s purge. “They are warriors,” Dennehy reportedly said. And he told the New York office that the two top officials at the FBI are “fighting” purge attempts and pushing for formal review processes.
They’re not alone. Politico reports that leaders of other FBI field offices have told their people not to fill out the questionnaires. The Trump Justice Department has already fired 30 Jan. 6 prosecutors and about a dozen deputies of former special counsel Jack Smith.
But the FBI has its own culture and traditions and deeply entrenched notions of what is and isn’t cause for dismissal.
About 6,000 of the FBI’s 38,000 employees are believed to have had at least some involvement in a Jan. 6 case. Meaning, if Trump wants to purge them all, he’ll be wiping out almost 16% of the bureau, making him more successful than any terrorist group in history.
A lawyer who represents some FBI staffers told Politico, “There’s growing resistance.” Referring to the questionnaires and the special agents in charge, who typically run field offices, the lawyer said, “Some are telling people beneath them, don’t submit it, or don’t submit it right away.”The New York office has more than 2,500 people, including agents, civilian employees, and about 500 law enforcement tasked from other agencies.FWIW, the New York field office is famously independent, even of the FBI leadership. Not always in a good way.
Dennehy, however, appears to be cut from different cloth. A former Marine, Dennehy in his memo to his team described hunkering down in a foxhole to keep safe: “It sucked,” he wrote. “But it worked.”
Published with permission of The Fucking News. Subscribe here.
