The acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department on Wednesday denounced the acting F.B.I. director and his top aide for what he described as “insubordination” after they resisted his efforts to identify agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, an ultimatum that incited a backlash across the bureau.
The official, Emil Bove III, the interim deputy attorney general, accused Brian J. Driscoll and his deputy, Robert C. Kissane, who were tapped to run the F.B.I. until President Trump’s nominee is confirmed, of failing to provide him with the names of bureau employees on the “core team” that prosecuted the rioters.
“The purpose of the requests was to permit the Justice Department to conduct a review of those particular agents’ conduct” to determine if they had committed ethical or procedural breaches, Mr. Bove wrote in a memo to employees that was obtained by The New York Times.
“F.B.I. acting leadership refused to comply,” he wrote.
Neither the Justice Department nor the F.B.I. immediately responded to a request for comment.
The letter amounted to an extraordinary escalation of tensions between the department’s political leadership and nonpartisan career officials at the bureau. It raises questions about why Mr. Bove did not fire the acting leaders of the bureau and why his original request was not in writing.
Mr. Bove added that the “insubordination” forced the department to issue a far-reaching memo to all bureau staff members requesting that they provide details about their involvement in the cases, which could include 5,000 of the department’s 38,000 employees.
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