When President Donald Trump issued a mass clemency of Jan. 6 insurrectionists — including violent criminals who beat police officers and the leaders of far-right paramilitary groups convicted of seditious conspiracy — he put the lives of FBI agents who helped investigate those cases in serious danger, attorney Chris Mattei told CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday.
Mattei represents nine FBI agents who sued to try to block the Trump administration from gathering information on the agents who worked on investigations of the president, or of the Jan. 6 cases.
"Look at some of the people that were released by Donald Trump, including the leader of the Proud Boys, the leader of the Oath Keepers," said Tapper. "I mean, these are individuals who already had a hostility to federal agents. I mean, is there a real risk, a real fear that perhaps if people are named, FBI agents are named, the individuals that we're showing on the screen right now, or those similarly aligned might go after them?"
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"There's no might about it — it's a certainty," said Mattei. "They've committed to that. We included evidence in our filing that some of the people who have been pardoned have called for retribution against the federal agents who were involved in their cases. So we are trying to protect them."
The important thing to note, Mattei continued, is that "federal agents are used to being in danger. They are not used to being endangered by the actions of their own government. It's preposterous that we're in a situation where the FBI had to go to court to get protection from what they fear the government might do."
"Now, we hope that we're wrong," he added. "We hope that the DOJ, as I said, comes in tomorrow and says that they're not going to go after any agents and that, to the extent there's any disciplinary review, it will be through the normal channels. That's really not too much to ask."
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