Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, was the driving force behind a purge of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who had investigated Donald Trump, a new book reveals.
Miller trampled the independence of the FBI by demanding firings that would satisfy the US president’s desire for retribution, journalists Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis write in Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department.
“Stephen Miller is breathing down my neck,” Emil Bove, then Trump’s chief enforcer at the justice department, confided in FBI leaders, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian.
After his first White House term, Trump faced federal criminal investigations into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His election victory last year effectively ended both prosecutions and left him spoiling for revenge.
In the second week of his second presidency he had already directed the removal of top leaders of the Department of Justice (DoJ), the authors write, and “his lieutenants at the White House and DoJ dramatically turned up the heat at the FBI”.
Bove, a lawyer who defended Trump in the two federal criminal cases and was on his legal team during his New York hush-money trial, was now acting deputy attorney general (he has subsequently been appointed as a federal appeals court judge).
Bove told the acting director of the FBI, Brian Driscoll, and his deputy, Robert Kissane, that he wanted a list of agents from the Washington field office who took part in the investigations into the 6 January 2021, insurrection and the classified documents case.
“‘We need to do a DoJ review,’ Bove told them, and said it was possible some agents would need to be fired,” the authors report.
Driscoll resisted, saying he did not want to provide such a list and did not understand why the justice department needed to review them, pointing out that the FBI had its own internal mechanisms to deal with potential misconduct.
But Miller, who has been described as the most powerful unelected person in America, had other ideas. Leonnig and Davis write: “On the evening of Tuesday, January 28, Bove took several calls from Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who had assumed the role of exacting the president’s revenge and delivering the fearsome new headlines to please both Trump and his supporters.
“Miller said he had talked with [FBI director nominee Kash] Patel, who was anxious to see more ‘targeted’ officials at the FBI removed from their jobs, to match how swiftly DoJ was firing prosecutors. Patel essentially wanted the FBI firings to happen faster. Miller had pressed Bove to get it done, saying he agreed, according to later reports of Bove’s account.”
The following morning, Bove informed Driscoll and Kissane about Patel’s wish and Miller’s order that key FBI personnel who authorized the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents investigations be dismissed. Driscoll and Kissane then told the executive assistant directors that mass firings were on the way.
“For most, it felt like the world was spinning,” the authors write. “They were career agents, not political followers of one administration or another … They would never mention their political views at work, but this was a Republican-leaning group. One director thought to himself: ‘Hell, several of us voted for Trump.’”
On 30 January, after Patel had told his Senate confirmation hearing that he was unaware of any discussions about politically motivated firings at the FBI, Bove again pushed Driscoll and Kissane to provide a list of names of agents involved in the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases.
Again Driscoll refused, the book continues, citing the bureau’s longstanding practice of protecting agents’ anonymity. “‘I can’t believe you’re fighting me,’ Bove said, sounding insulted.
“‘This is people’s careers, and they didn’t do anything wrong,’ Driscoll said.
“Bove at one point asked for a far more limited set: how about they start with the names of every FBI agent who had been part of the search of Trump’s bedroom in Mar-a-Lago?
“‘I just need a list to cut,’ Bove said, frustration rising in his voice. ‘I just need five or six names because Stephen Miller is breathing down my neck.’”
Leonnig, a former Washington Post reporter who is now a senior investigative correspondent at MSNBC, and Davis, an investigative reporter at the Post, observe: “Bove was acting and talking like a man under significant pressure to deliver some scalps to the White House. But Driscoll wasn’t budging. And an increasingly angry Bove wasn’t giving up either.”
On 31 January Bove sent Driscoll a memo entitled “Terminations” demanding that he fire seven specific senior leaders and, by Tuesday, 4 February, turn over a list of all agents and supervisors involved in the January 6 investigation.
The executive assistant directors left at the end of the week, taking a combined 150 years of FBI experience with them. “When Bove’s deadline arrived at noon on Tuesday, Driscoll had arranged to send him a list of agents – but instead of names, he provided employee ID numbers. Bove was furious. The same day, the FBI Agents Association filed its suit to stop the release of agents’ names.
“‘This feels like a resistance,’ Bove said.
“‘Because it is,’ Driscoll answered.”
