By Steve Neavling
Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, led a campaign to purge FBI agents who investigated the president, according to a new book that says Miller personally pressured Justice Department officials to deliver “scalps” to the White House.
In Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department, journalists Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis write that Miller “trampled the independence of the FBI” by demanding firings to fulfill Trump’s desire for retribution, The Guardian reports.
“Stephen Miller is breathing down my neck,” Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, told FBI leaders, according to the book. Bove, a former Trump defense attorney who has since been appointed to a federal appeals court, sought the names of agents who investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
When FBI Acting Director Brian Driscoll refused to provide a list, Miller and Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director at the time, intensified the pressure. Miller called Bove repeatedly, insisting that “key FBI personnel who authorized the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents investigations be dismissed,” the authors write.
Bove relayed that Miller “had assumed the role of exacting the president’s revenge,” demanding quick firings to match those already underway at the Justice Department.
“I just need a list to cut,” Bove told Driscoll, according to the book. “I just need five or six names because Stephen Miller is breathing down my neck.”
Driscoll again refused.
“This is people’s careers, and they didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.
When Bove later demanded “a list of every FBI agent who had been part of the search of Trump’s bedroom in Mar-a-Lago,” Driscoll sent him employee ID numbers instead of names.
“This feels like a resistance,” Bove said.
“Because it is,” Driscoll replied.
The confrontation ended with several senior FBI officials departing the bureau, taking decades of experience with them. Leonnig and Davis describe Bove as “a man under significant pressure to deliver some scalps to the White House,” as Miller’s campaign for revenge upended the FBI’s tradition of political independence.
