Multiple senior FBI officials FORCED OUT by TRUMP administration

Trump administration officials have forced out all six of the FBI’s most senior executives and multiple heads of FBI field offices across the country, current and former FBI officials told NBC News.

They included the high-profile leader of the Washington, D.C., field office, which was involved in the prosecutions of President Donald Trump, and federal prosecutors who investigated Jan. 6 rioters. A congressional aide said the number of prosecutors impacted is roughly two dozen.

A letter sent to the fired prosecutors said their removal was based on their role in the Jan. 6 prosecutions. It cited an executive order Trump recently signed that called the Jan. 6 prosecutions “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years.”

In a separate memo to the FBI workforce sent out Friday night, the bureau’s acting director, Brian J. Driscoll, Jr., informed employees that acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, had asked for a list of all FBI employees who worked on January 6 cases for "a review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary."

“We understand that this request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts,” Driscoll wrote. “I am one of those employees.”

It was not immediately clear why the FBI and DOJ officials had been ousted. The FBI and DOJ declined to comment.

The removals came a day after Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, testified under oath in his Senate confirmation hearing that, “all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.”

Asked by a reporter about the removals on Friday afternoon, Trump said he was not aware of them.

“No, but we have some very bad people over there. It was weaponized at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “They came after a lot of people like me, but they came after a lot of people. No, I wasn’t involved in that. I’ll have to see what is exactly going on after this is finished.”

Trump added, though, that he felt some FBI officials needed to be removed.

“If they fired some people over there, that’s a good thing, because they were very bad. They were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization,” he said. “They used the Justice Department to go after their political opponent, which in itself is illegal, and obviously it didn’t work.”