By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Thursday dismissed lawsuits brought by FBI agents seeking to prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from publicly identifying those who worked on the investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington found that the risk of Justice Department leadership disclosing the names of FBI agents is “too speculative” to allow them to sue.
“They do not plausibly allege that Defendants are about to engage in any of the conduct agents are worried about,” Cobb wrote in her ruling, which granted the Trump administration’s bid to dismiss the cases.
Spokespeople for the FBI agents who sued and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department has said it is conducting an internal review of potential misconduct in the probe, which led to more than 1,500 criminal cases against Trump supporters accused of storming the Capitol in a failed attempt to stop certification of his 2020 election loss.
Justice Department officials have not ruled out publicly naming agents, but have said they have no immediate plans to do so.
Two groups of FBI agents anonymously sued in February after Justice Department leadership demanded the FBI turn over a list of more than 5,000 agents who were involved in the investigation, an order FBI leadership at the time initially resisted.
The legal dispute reflected the ongoing tensions within the Justice Department as Trump officials expelled dozens of staffers involved in investigations condemned by Trump.
Lawyers for the agents argued their identities were at risk of being shared with the White House and wider public, citing Trump’s decision to pardon nearly all charged in the Capitol attack and vows from top administration officials to expose past “weaponization” in the federal government against Trump and his supporters.
They argued that disclosure of the list would jeopardize their safety, making them potential targets of former January 6 defendants they investigated, and would violate a federal privacy law as well as protections under the U.S. Constitution.
Justice Department officials have said that agents who were assigned cases and followed orders will not be disciplined. Department lawyers argued the agents had not produced sufficient evidence that their names were at risk of being disclosed.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Matthew Lewis)
