A former acting FBI director who resisted demands to turn over the names of agents who investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is being forced out of the bureau, two sources told The Associated Press.
Brian Driscoll, who served as acting FBI director in the first weeks of the Trump administration, will leave the FBI on Friday.
Brian Driscoll fired
What we know: Driscoll, a veteran agent who worked international counterterrorism investigations in New York and had also commanded the bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, had most recently served as acting director in charge of the Critical Incident Response Group, which deploys manpower and resources to crisis situations.
Driscoll was named acting director in January to replace Christopher Wray and served in the position as FBI Director Kash Patel’s nomination was pending.
He made headlines after he and Rob Kissane, the then-deputy director, resisted Trump administration demands for information about agents who investigated the mob of Trump supporters who participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
What we don’t know: It’s unclear exactly why Driscoll is being let go: The FBI declined to comment.
FBI purge
Dig deeper: The news comes amid a much broader personnel purge that has unfolded over the last several months under the leadership of Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
Numerous senior officials including top agents in charge of big-city field offices have been pushed out of their jobs and some agents have been subjected to polygraph exams, moves that former officials say have roiled the workforce and contributed to angst.
The FBI has moved under Patel’s watch to aggressively demote, reassign or push out agents.
In April, for instance, the bureau reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, two people familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
Numerous special agents in charge of field offices have been told to retire, resign or accept reassignment.
Another agent, Michael Feinberg, has said publicly that he was told to resign or accept a demotion amid scrutiny from leadership of his friendship with Peter Strzok, a lead agent on the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation who was fired by the Justice Department in 2018 following revelations that he had exchanged negative text messages about President Donald Trump with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page.