FBI turns over details of 5000 employees who worked on January 6 cases

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/fbi-employees-tuesday/index.html

by belter • 1 year ago

103 46 1 year ago

There is a lawsuit about this, "FBI agents file class action lawsuit against Trump’s Justice Department over ‘retribution’ for Jan 6 and Mar-a-Lago investigations"

* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

"FBI agents sue DOJ to block release of who worked on Trump, Jan. 6 cases":

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/04/...

abeppu6• 1 year ago

The cognitive dissonance here is at another level. Had FBI staff refused to work on these cases when the Bureau directed them to, would that not have been exactly the "deep state" behavior that the Trump conspiracy fringe complained about for years?

tacitusarc2• 1 year ago

Or if the Justice Department directed the Bureau and the FBI refused, that would be a clear example of this sort of administrative power Trump’s coalition supposedly hates.

The FBI also has a reputation as populated by generally very straight laced conservatives, so this is an odd situation to watch unfold.

apothegm3• 1 year ago

The issue isn’t the compliance with the order. It’s the order being issued in the first place.

abeppu6• 1 year ago

But

- Responding to the agency-level decision to pursue these doesn't need the info on these 5k staff

- The decision to investigate these is part of the FBIs job. Very obvious, visible crimes took place. It doesn't matter whether you agree with the perpetrators on some things; they broke the law as written. The outcome of investigations was convincing enough to get a lot of convictions (btw should we expect judges to be targeted next?).

There have been times when the FBI pursued stuff where it wasn't clear that a crime occurred. I recall seeing stuff about the FBI tailing casual environmental activists going to some small peaceful protest. Those politically motivated wastes of resources when there was a lot of room for discretion are perhaps cause for concern. Jan 6 people who broke into a federal building, attacked police officers, and destroyed property are not such a case.

amarcheschi• 1 year ago

I was quite flabbergasted by the "let him at least work for some time" rhetoric. I do not know if it's because america never lived under dictatorship like many other european countries, but this is not okay. Purging scientific data is not okay. Granting people access to write permission on federal payment systems is not okay. I could go on with other items, but it wouldn't be useful.

Perhaps an american movie quote can explain it better, given HN demographics is made by nerds like me: This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applauses

aaomidi2• 1 year ago

I do not know if it's because america never lived under dictatorship like many other european countries,

We quite literally put American citizens in camps because of their race and nationality.

apothegm3• 1 year ago

Which was awful. And was not a dictatorship.

davidw2• 1 year ago

If this were happening in another country, outfits like CNN would be writing things like

"Regime purges security forces it deems disloyal"

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-junta-establishes-h...

croes• 1 year ago

CNN is a tough position because it’s in the country of the purge

AnotherGoodName2• 1 year ago

Yep similar to reddit going on a banning spree of subs critical of Musk right now. Speak up and you go out of business. Everyone’s in a heads down situation hoping they aren’t noticed.

davidw2• 1 year ago

The press trying to coddle authoritarians is the way you get the next purge and the purge after that.

ctrlp• 1 year ago

Regimes do not purge security forces deemed disloyal at their peril.

belter2• 1 year ago

Everybody was warned: https://x.com/paulg/status/1851200055220306378

piva00• 1 year ago

Can you copy-paste the tweet? I can't see it.

tim333• 1 year ago

It's a bit early to write that when they haven't purged any yet.

Also that article is a bit silly with "Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government". There's an orange looking guy who would dispute that biggly.

TwoNineA• 1 year ago

These are Stalinist purges, without the violence. From outsider perspective, this is extremely sad and worrying.

tstrimple• 1 year ago

This is what they were promised. This is what conservatives voted for. This is what conservatives want. The warnings were ignored for way too long.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless ― if the left allows it to be”

~ Kevin Roberts - President of Heritage Foundation

Now maybe we can stop pretending that we all want the same thing and just have different ways to get there. People have very different value systems and it has been on clear display for decades now.

taylodl2• 1 year ago

That's why they're terrified of Luigi Mangione. He's evidence that the left may not allow this to be a bloodless revolution. That's why they've suppressed the news about his case. They want the public to forget. Never forget.

IncreasePosts• 1 year ago

I wonder if Trump is going to go after the security person who shot Ashley babbitt? If the jan 6 rioters were doing nothing wrong, then that guy pretty clearly just committed murder.

Hizonner• 1 year ago

This seems suboptimal.

tmaly• 1 year ago

depending on which political side you are on, you are likely seeing a different movie than what the other side is seeing.

walls• 1 year ago

Depending on whether or not you live in the Fox news cinematic universe, you mean.

jmyeet• 1 year ago

A difficult part of all this is that fascism doesn't have a universal definition. If anything, it's a subjective test of traits. I personally think Umberto Eco's definition is a good starting point [1].

But a key part is that there has to be an in-group and an out-group [2], which pretty much requires some great moral panic or perceived threat. For this reason you may hear the description that fascism is a "suicide cult". Why? Because the in-group continually shrinks as out-groups are eliminated and new out-groups are found.

A good example of this is describing the "Judeo-Christian" country. If there's one thing I can guarantee, it's the Christian fascist movement ever succeeds in eliminating its perceived enemies, they'll turn on Jewish people next.

Attacking those who worked on J6 prosecutions does two things: it feeds into the narrative about the "deep state" and identifies a new out-group to rally around.

American conservatism is fascism. It's only purpose is to punish one's perceived enemies. Cruelty is the point. Chaos is the point. All of this distracts from the true purpose: looting from the public purse. $8 trillion of the nation's ~$35T in national debt in the almost 250 year history of the US happened between 2016 and 2020. The vast majority of this was wealth transfer to the ultra-wealthy. 2024 to 2028 will be that on steroids.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

[2] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-10-23/how-fascism-wo...

tacitusarc2• 1 year ago

Obama, 8 years: 9.5

Trump, 4 years: 7.8

Biden, 4 years: 8.4

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/mar/12/joe-biden/...

https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-and...

It’s not that I don’t think the debt is a problem, but it’s also typically a conservative talking point. Given your rhetoric on conservatism, and your representation of the facts, it seems unlikely to me you actually care about this.

abeppu6• 1 year ago

I dunno, I think it's a real point badly made.

In the first Trump administration, people talked about the emoluments clause and all the ways Trump was getting extra revenue from charging the Secret Service for hotel rooms at his properties when they were protecting him, or pressuring foreign diplomats to stay at his hotel to curry favor, etc etc. But the scale of this stuff was tiny in comparison to federal spending and wouldn't show up on any graph of the national debt or the federal budget.

But then he not only got away with everything, the SCOTUS ruling on immunity for "official acts" gives him broad protection for basically anything going forward. If he was directing Musk to use that Treasury Department payment system to send huge deposits directly to Trump's accounts, there would be no consequences. There's no reason not to milk the office for everything he can, and the institutional safeguards have collapsed.

AnimalMuppet• 1 year ago

But a key part is that there has to be an in-group and an out-group [2], which pretty much requires some great moral panic or perceived threat.

But the outgroup can't be too big. Otherwise it becomes capable of real (rather than just apparent) resistance. Making "those who think crimes were committed on January 6th, and that those crimes should be prosecuted" the outgroup may be a strategic error, because that's far too many people.

I think, if this is following the fascist playbook, it's doing so accidently and badly. I think he's just trying to punish everyone who ever told him he did something wrong. (And make it so no one will do so ever in the future, so maybe that is part of the fascist playbook.)

American conservatism is fascism. It's only purpose is to punish one's perceived enemies. Cruelty is the point. Chaos is the point.

That's not conservativism. That's the shell of conservativism after a hostile takeover. There's plenty of conservatives who are appalled at all this.

$8 trillion of the nation's ~$35T in national debt in the almost 250 year history of the US happened between 2016 and 2020.

True. Now do 2020-2024.

asadotzler• 1 year ago

That's not conservativism.

Sure it is. You may not like it, but the hostile takeover was successful and you can't pretend it wasn't by disclaiming it. Today's conservative GOP are what they are, and pretending otherwise or playing semantics does no one any good -- except if you're defending those fascists.

neilv• 1 year ago

I hope they'll be OK, individually, and as an institution.

I think of the modern FBI as generally straight-laced people, who take their sworn duty seriously.

Among all the crazy coup-like dismantling and subversion of government going on in recent weeks... starting purges of principled people who might still have some power to help keep a rogue branch in check... I guess would be one of the moves.

FBI turns over details of 5000 employees who worked on January 6 cases

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