NBC News is reporting that the FBI's most senior executives are being forced out by the Trump administration.
They include 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 the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Brian Driscoll, the FBI's acting director, informed agents worldwide Friday evening that thousands of people could be impacted.
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"I am gravely concerned,” Bill Gore, former FBI assistant director, told NBC 7.
Gore spent 32 years at the bureau before becoming San Diego County's sheriff. He ran for sheriff three times on the Republican ticket but no longer claims a political affiliation — just as he identified as independent during his nearly three decades at the FBI.
His career dates to the Hoover years. He ran field offices in Seattle and San Diego. The last of three tours at FBI headquarters, Gore held the position of assistant director.
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“The FBI, that‘s one of their primary areas of investigation is public corruption," Gore said. "If we don’t investigate those cases, who does?"
Gore says this FBI purge is politically motivated in an agency that has only one political appointment, which is the director. The Merit System Protection Board is supposed to protect agents from being fired for political reasons.
"You can be fired, and I fired people, but there has to be good cause, not political reasons because they investigated this or investigated that," Gore said.
Agency members forced out, fired or taking retirement appear to share common connections. Their work on Trump investigations and the Jan. 6 cases.
The president on Friday said he was not aware of the removals. They come a day after Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, testified under oath in his Senate confirmation hearing that all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.
Gore says it will have a chilling affect on the future of public corruption investigations.
“If someone makes an accusation against somebody in this administration, just sweep it under the carpet, look the other way, don’t investigate it because your job might depend on it,” Gore said.
Gore says the greater impact could be to the wellbeing of the U.S. citizens.
“If they are left incapacitated, made less than affective as they can be, the country is going to be less safe,” Gore said.
Gore is also sharing his sympathy with the families of those forced out. Although, the former assistant director says, as career civil servants, there is recourse for them be made whole or reinstated. That process, however, could take a lot of time and money.
In that Friday evening memo sent by the acting director to the FBI workforce, Driscoll pointed out that he is among the thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts.
