MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
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 6 Capitol riot investigation. A key figure in these efforts has been a top department official appointed by Trump - Emil Bove. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas has some reporting about Bove's own role in the January 6 investigation, and he's with us now to tell us more about it. Good morning, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: Let us start with Emil Bove. What can you tell us about him?
LUCAS: So Bove 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 Bove to serve in a top Justice Department role, a role that didn't need Senate confirmation. So since Trump's inauguration, Bove has been the acting No. 2 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.
MARTIN: So tell us more about what he's done.
LUCAS: Well, he's forced the transfers of several senior career officials - these are nonpolitical 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 Bove's 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.
MARTIN: Well, say more about that. What exactly did he do on the Capitol riot investigation?
LUCAS: 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 Bove 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 Bove was aggressive in his work on January 6. 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.
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CHRISTOPHER O'LEARY: At no point did I ever hear of Emil 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.
LUCAS: Now, the former prosecutor who worked with Bove 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 Bove's name would be on that list. Now, I asked the Justice Department about this disconnect between Bove's aggressive approach, investigating January 6 back then, and his hostility towards it now. The department did not respond.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Ryan, thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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