Top FBI official forced out after criticizing Trump pursuit of agents who investigated Jan. 6

WASHINGTON — The head of the FBI’s New York Field Office was forced out of the bureau on Monday, a month after he urged his employees to “dig in” after the Trump administration removed senior FBI leaders and requested the names of all agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases, five sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

In an email to FBI staff in New York on Monday, Dennehy said that he had been forced to retire.

“Late Friday, I was informed that I needed to put my retirement papers in today, which I just did,” Dennehy wrote. “I was not given a reason for this decision.” 

Two of the sources said James Dennehy, a highly respected FBI leader and former Marine, was given a choice to resign or be fired.

Last month, Dennehy wrote an email to his staff after the Trump Justice Department, led by Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, demanded a list of all bureau employees who had worked on criminal cases against the hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.

“Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own as good people are being walked out of the FBI,” Dennehy wrote. “And others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy.”

“Time for me to dig in,” Dennehy said.

Dennehy was referring to the ouster of eight veteran FBI leaders a day after then-incoming FBI director Kash Patel testified under oath that “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.”

Instead, the head of the Washington field office, who played a role in the criminal investigations of Trump, was ousted along with other senior officials. Bove also requested the names of all agents who had worked on Jan. 6 cases.

It is widely believed inside the FBI that the resistance by Dennehy, along with the acting director Brian Driscoll and acting deputy director Rob Kissane — prevented a mass firing of thousands of FBI officials who worked on the January 6th cases. Dennehy’s removal is likely to reignite fears of mass firings.

In his farewell email to colleagues on Monday, Dennehy urged FBI employees to protect the bureau from political interference. After FBI agents surveilled and smeared members of political groups viewed as “subversive” by longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover during the Cold War, a series of reforms were enacted to ensure that the bureau not be used by elected leaders to retaliate against their political enemies.

Dennehy urged his colleagues to maintain those values.

“As I leave today, I have an immense feeling of pride — to have represented an office of professionals who will always do the right thing for the right reasons; who will always seek the truth while upholding the rule of law,” he wrote. “Who will always handle cases and evidence with an overabundance of caution and care for the innocent, the victims, and the process first; and who will always remain independent.”

Dennehy spent six years in the Marine Corps before joining the FBI after the Sept. 11 attacks. At the bureau, he specialized in weapons counter-proliferation, and spent time in management roles in both the Washington and New York field offices before taking over the FBI’s Newark Field Office in 2022 and then being promoted to lead the New York office in 2024. 

The move comes amid intense unease in the bureau, which will be headed by two Trump loyalists: Patel, a former federal prosecutor, Congressional staffer and national security official, and Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcast host and former Secret Service Agent and New York police officer who has accused the FBI of staging the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

FBI special agents expressed shock over the announcement that Bongino would take over the deputy director role, where he’ll oversee the bureau’s day-to-day operations. The announcement came just after the Senate confirmed Patel as the bureau’s director in a largely party-line vote.

Trump has promised to fire “some” FBI special agents who worked Jan. 6 cases, claiming, without citing specific evidence, that they were “corrupt.”

On Friday, Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin demoted several top officials in that office, including high-ranking prosecutors who had worked key cases against Jan. 6 rioters and other Trump supporters.

Trump has nominated Martin — a “stop the steal” organizer who was on the grounds of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and who represented several Capitol attack defendants — to permanently run the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the nation’s capitol.