Transcript
Nicole Wallace (0:00)
Some new reporting that has broken since.
Ken Delaney (0:01)
We'Ve been on the air.
Nicole Wallace (0:02)
It's something we've covered for years on.
Ken Delaney (0:04)
This program, and it's happening.
Nicole Wallace (0:07)
It can only be described as the.
Ken Delaney (0:09)
Start of a massive, much larger than.
Nicole Wallace (0:11)
Expected purge at the FBI of FBI agents and officials.
Julie Kelly (0:16)
Many of them, in one way or another, touched the investigations into Donald Trump.
Nicole Wallace (0:21)
Sources telling NBC News this the office.
Ken Delaney (0:23)
Of Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove asked the FBI for a list of.
Nicole Wallace (0:28)
Bureau employees involved in January 6 cases.
Julie Kelly (0:31)
Sparking panic inside the bureau by people.
Nicole Wallace (0:35)
Who fear retribution by the Trump administration amidst an ongoing purge of FBI leadership. Meanwhile, my colleague, NBC's Kendallanean, reports that several top FBI executives were told to.
Ken Delaney (0:47)
Resign or be fired and that the.
Julie Kelly (0:49)
Purge includes more than 20 heads of.
Ken Delaney (0:51)
FBI field offices, including those in Miami and Washington, D.C. yeah, this is something.
Nicole Wallace (0:57)
I've been sort of chasing all day, and it's tough because there's so many, you know, rumors and a lot of worry being spread within the Justice Department, within the FBI. You know, so there's this community, obviously, of all of these people who work these January 6th cases, you know, on the FBI side, on the DOJ side. And so what we can report is that there was this request for this, you know, list of all these individuals who worked on January 6th cases, and that that's something that the Washington Field office has cooperated with thus far. You know, the issue here is that it's such a large list, and so the question is, how are they going to figure out who they're going to be focused and targeted. Focused on and potentially targeting here. Right, because it's just so many people within the bureau. This was the largest investigation in FBI history in terms of number of defendants. You're talking about over 1,500 defendants overall. And this touched basically every field office in the country. And, you know, some field offices were a lot more enthusiastic about these cases, frankly, than. Than others, because there was a lot of SC skepticism about these cases within the bureau. And, you know, there was some, I think, tension between the FBI and DOJ and the Washington field office and other field offices across the country over the handling of these cases overall. And, you know, but there are these. So I think there's a span of this, right, because there are people who were very vaguely involved in at one point, one January 6th case, and then there's people who were really in the weeds, and January 6th was their main focus. And I think those are the people probably have the most to worry about in the coming days over whether or not, you know, they're basically just going to be fired or targeted based on what we've seen at headquarters thus far and coming out of the Justice Department so far. But if you were to go after everybody who touched a January 6th case, I mean, I had one former official say that would be like 3/4 of the bureau, basically, because a lot of people were involved at this on one stage. And remember, those cases range from those very low level cases, sort of those misdemeanor cases that were of the most controversy, all the way up to seditious conspiracy. But the more common one was those assault on a federal officer charges that were really common, those AFO charges. And even people who were skeptical of the Justice Department's handling of those overall knew, like, were behind those cases. And I think most of the American public would be, too. When you have a cop getting beat by a, by a rioter, that's something that most people say that should be something that's prosecuted by the federal government. So I think, you know, the devil. I mean, you know, the details are really going to matter here about who they end up focusing on, Nicole, about, you know, as they go about sort of this ongoing purge of FBI leadership, and we'll see how far it's going to trickle down into the rank and file of the FBI. When you're talking about the scope of this, right? In every field office, you know, when you do an arrest, for example, that's a lot of people who are just involved in that arrest directly, right? So, you know, there might be somebody who's actually handling this case, who's actually championing one case going forward. But then when you actually go to execute that arrest, you need a bunch of officials involved in that. So then, you know, when you're talking about the paperwork here, there's a lot of names on a lot of these documents that you're talking about, the intelligence analysts who might have been involved with it as well, because obviously, everything has to be turned over in discovery. So those are all names that would be required to be turned over to defense attorneys on this. And when, you know, for example, let's take the caseone of the only ongoing cases involving a January 6th defendant who actually was convicted of plotting to murder FBI agents who investigated him. And that was a jury in Tennessee that convicted him of that. Separately, that case is still ongoing, although his defense attorney is representing that Donald Trump's pardon should apply to that conduct as well, even though that was conduct that was performed way after January 6th when he plotted to murder the FBI employees. But that case, for example, just comes to mind because that involved, I remember a large number of FBI employees and when they turned over those documents, it was a lot of names that were associated with that because in the discovery process you've got to turn all those names over. So even if there's only sort of passing involvement in one of these cases, your name is going to be on those documents. So that list of people who were involved in January 6 cases at the FBI is really long. He wanted to turn the FBI into.
