Trump ally Stephen Miller at heart of FBI agent purge, new book reveals | Donald Trump
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was behind a purge of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who investigated Donald Trump, a new book reveals.
Miller trampled on the independence of the FBI by demanding firings that would satisfy the US president’s desire for retaliation, write journalists Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis in Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department.
“Stephen Miller is breathing down my neck,” Emil Bove, then in charge of Trump’s execution at the Justice Department, told FBI leaders, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian.
After his first term in the White House, Trump was the subject of federal criminal investigations into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His election victory last year effectively ended both lawsuits and left him with a desire for revenge.
By the second week of his second presidency, he had already ordered the removal of top leaders of the Department of Justice (DoJ), the authors write, and “his lieutenants at the White House and DoJ significantly turned up the pressure on the FBI.”
Bove, a lawyer who defended Trump in both federal criminal cases and was part of his legal team during his secret trial in New York, was now an acting assistant attorney general (he was later named a federal appeals court judge).
Bove told Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll and his deputy, Robert Kissane, that he wanted a list of agents from the Washington field office who participated in the investigations into the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the classified documents affair.
“’We need to do a review of the DoJ,’ Bove told them, and said it was possible some agents might have 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, emphasizing that the FBI had its own internal mechanisms for dealing with possible 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 received several calls from Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who had taken on the role of vindicting the president and issuing new, frightening headlines to please both Trump and his supporters.
“Miller said he spoke with [FBI director nominee Kash] Patel, who was eager to see more “targeted” FBI officials removed from their positions, to match the speed with which the DoJ was firing prosecutors. Patel essentially wanted the FBI layoffs to happen more quickly. Miller had pressed Bove to do so, saying he agreed, according to later reports on Bove’s account.
The next morning, Bove informed Driscoll and Kissane of Patel’s desire and Miller’s order to fire key FBI personnel who authorized the investigations into the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents. Driscoll and Kissane then told executive assistant directors that mass layoffs were underway.
“For most, it felt as if the world was spinning,” the authors write. “They were career operatives, not political supporters of one administration or another… They never mentioned their political views at work, but this was a Republican-leaning group. One manager said, ‘Damn, several of us voted for Trump.'”
On January 30, after Patel said during his Senate confirmation hearing that he was not aware of any discussions of 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.
Driscoll again refused, the book continues, citing the bureau’s long-standing practice of protecting agents’ anonymity. “I can’t believe you’re fighting me,” Bove said, looking insulted.
“’It’s people’s careers, and they didn’t do anything wrong,’” Driscoll said.
“Bove at one point asked for a much more limited set: How about starting with the names of all the FBI agents who participated in the search of Trump’s room at Mar-a-Lago?
“‘I just need a list to delete,’ 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 behaved and spoke like a man under significant pressure to deliver scalps to the White House. But Driscoll wouldn’t budge. And Bove, increasingly angrier, wouldn’t give up either.”
On January 31, Bove sent Driscoll a memo titled “Firings” demanding that he fire seven specific top executives and, by Tuesday, February 4, turn over a list of all officers and supervisors involved in the January 6 investigation.
The executive assistant directors left at the end of the week, taking with them 150 years of combined FBI experience. “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 identification numbers. Bove was furious. That same day, the FBI Agents’ Association filed a lawsuit to prevent the release of the agents’ names.
“It feels like resistance,” Bove said.
“‘Because it is,’ Driscoll replied.”
