Trump's Trials - DOJ official targeting Jan. 6 investigators worked on those cases himself

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

The No. 2 acting official at the DOJ, Emil Bove, has been shaking up the agency and its past work on the 2021 Capitol riot. But he also has his own history with Jan. 6 cases. Support NPR and hear every episode sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I'm Michelle Martin. Over the past three weeks or so, the Trump Justice Department has made a series of personnel moves that have rattled the institution. That includes targeting prosecutors and FBI personnel who worked on the January 6th Capitol riot investigation. A key figure in these efforts has been a top department official appointed by Trump, Emil Bové. NPR Justice correspondent Ryan Lucas has some, Emil Bové. NPR justice correspondent

Ryan Lucas has some reporting about Bové's own role in the January 6th investigation, and he's with us now to tell us more about it. Good morning, Ryan. Good morning. Let us start with Emil Bové. What can you tell us about him? So Bové worked for many years as a federal prosecutor in New York and then moved over to the criminal defense side. And he's probably best known for working as President Trump's personal attorney in several of Trump's recent criminal cases that includes the two federal cases that were brought by special counsel Jack Smith. But after Trump won the election, he tapped Boves to serve

in a top Justice Department role, a role that didn't need Senate confirmation. So since Trump's inauguration, Boves has been the acting number two official in the Justice Department. And in that role, he has spearheaded a lot of the personnel moves that have, as you mentioned at the top, rattled the Justice Department since Trump's inauguration. So tell us more about what he's done. Well, he's forced the transfers of several senior career officials. These are non-political folks, put them on an immigration enforcement task force. Many of those officials left the department instead of doing that.

He's had a hand in firing more than a dozen prosecutors who worked Capitol riot cases. He's also fired eight senior FBI officials and demanded and now has in hand a list of the names of all FBI personnel who worked on January 6 cases. Now the Justice Department says it needs the names in order to review the agents conduct to see whether they weaponized the FBI for partisan reasons in the Capitol riot probe. A lot of people at the FBI though saw that as a possible prelude to mass firings for, they say, retaliatory purposes. Now, I've been talking to former colleagues of Boves from his days as a federal prosecutor in New York, and they have been really troubled by the hostility that he has shown for the

Capitol riot investigators and prosecutors in part because he himself, they say, worked January 6 cases. Well, say more about that. What exactly did he do on the Capitol riot investigation? Well, at the time of the riot, he was the co-chief of what is now called the National Security Unit in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan. I spoke with two former colleagues of his. One was a prosecutor, the other a top FBI agent in New York. And they told me that Boves led efforts by federal prosecutors there to help the FBI

aggressively investigate, identify and arrest Capitol rioters in the New York area. His former colleagues say that Boves was aggressive in his work on January 6th. They also say he never voiced any reservations about the investigation and what they were doing. Here's Christopher O'Leary. He was a top counterterrorism agent in the FBI's New York field office at the time. At no point did I ever hear of AMO or anybody else express concern about these investigations and these arrests that we were making because they were not concerning. They were like any other case that we worked as investigators and professionals.

Now, the former prosecutor who worked with Boves said that if the Justice Department were to make a list of prosecutors who worked January 6 cases the way that the department has of FBI agents, that Boves' name would be on that list. Now, I asked the Justice Department about this disconnect between Boves' aggressive approach investigating January 6th back then, and his hostility towards it now, the department did not respond. That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thank you. Thank you.

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