At least four more FBI officials with ties to investigations into President Donald Trump have been ousted since Friday, NBC News reported Monday.
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace announced the report during her second hour of her show before a larger discussion about former special counsel Jack Smith.
"In just the last few minutes, we learned, according to NBC News reporting, at least four more FBI officials who were tied to investigations into Donald Trump have been fired since we were last on the air having this conversation with Carol Leonnig on Friday," said Wallace.
At least one of those is special agent Aaron Tapp, who ran the FBI's San Antonio office. CNN reported that he was forced out after he was found to have helped oversee public corruption cases, including investigations into Trump.
"Tapp will be retiring from the bureau later this month, a third person briefed on the matter told CNN," according to the report.
One fired FBI official was the person who handled the FBI's jet fleet. FBI Director Kash Patel was reportedly caught last week using a taxpayer-funded government jet to visit his girlfriend. He was a 27-year veteran of the FBI. He is also the third head of the unit to be shoved out since Patel took over.
MSNBC ran an excerpt of the new book by Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, which attacks Smith and former Attorney General Merrick Garland for not working fast enough to indict and try Trump.
“Knowingly taking classified documents outside of a secure government facility was a crime, plain and simple, she explained. Trying to conceal them after receiving a May subpoena to return all classified records, as Trump had, made the crime far worse, she argued. But Olsen’s team knew that with Trump, all bets were off. The Justice Department would invariably treat the former president more gingerly.”
At one point in the book, Wallace read off a quote from former Justice Department official Julie Edelstein, “If it were anybody else, we would arrest him tomorrow."