The FBI purge and resistance hero: The Drizz

FBI officials may not permit their agency to go gentle into the dictatorial night.

Over the weekend, in a blizzard of activity [...] , FBI officials moved to resist the attempted coup.

Though he had carried out the order to decapitate the bureau’s top executives the day before, on Friday acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll reportedly refused to agree to fire certain agents involved with January 6th cases, and was trying to block a mass purge of such agents. In a message to staff Saturday, Driscoll reminded FBI agents of their rights to “due process and review in accordance with existing policy and law,” and emphasized “That process and our intent to follow it have not changed.”

  The Bulwark

The story of Brian Driscoll (who calls himself  Drizz) is that there were two names proposed for acting director and deputy director to the FBI. Driscoll was to be deputy, but the ever-incompetent Trump administration inadvertently exchanged the two names and advertised Driscoll as acting director. Apparently, it would have been too embarrassing to admit the error.

The FBI Agents Association sent a memo to employees over the weekend to remind them of their civil service protections. The memo urged them not to resign or to offer to resign, and recommended that agents respond to one question in the survey they’ve been instructed to answer: “I have been told I am ‘required to respond’ to this survey, without being afforded appropriate time to research my answers, speak with others, speak with counsel or other representation.”

[...]

Then on Sunday the top agent at the FBI’s New York field office, James Dennehy, wrote in an email to his staff: “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy. . . . Time for me to dig in.”

Yes.

Loving The Drizz.  His letter to FBI agents ended with "take care of each other."

When I first saw this picture, I said he looks like he should be named General Beauregard.  Recently I heard someone on a podcast say he looks like he just stepped out of a saloon.

Driscoll, the acting director of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of quiet resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to single out F.B.I. employees who investigated the Jan. 6 riot.

[...]

Even if he was not meant to be leading the agency, he has defended the rank-and-file. His refusal at the time to furnish the names of employees, as top Justice Department officials desired, and his insistence that a formal review process be put in place, has spurred widespread support for Mr. Driscoll.

[...]

Mr. Driscoll had been in charge of the Newark office for only about a week before he moved to the director’s suite on the seventh floor of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, thrust into the middle of a political firestorm.

[...]

Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Driscoll as unflappable. He was a special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service in San Diego before joining the F.B.I. in 2007. His first assignment was in the New York office, the largest outpost in the bureau, where agents form powerful alliances and deep connections.

In 2011, he passed rigorous tryouts and was selected to the F.B.I.’s Hostage Rescue Team, a highly trained unit formed in the years after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

[...]

Rescue team operators, including Mr. Driscoll, have repeatedly deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there, embedding with Navy SEAL and Delta Force commandos.

Former members of the rescue team said that Mr. Driscoll was dispatched in 2013 to Alabama, where they successfully rescued a 5-year-old boy who had been taken hostage in a bunker. He was a gunfighter on the blue squadron.

  NYT

Perfect: just stepped out of a saloon.

Indeed, Mr. Driscoll took part in the arrest of Samuel Fisher, an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, in Manhattan two weeks after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.

[...]

Mr. Fisher was pardoned by Mr. Trump.Chris O’Leary, a former top counterterrorism agent in New York who worked with Mr. Driscoll, pointed to his experience.

“What the F.B.I. needs most is a principled leader, and we have one right now in Brian Driscoll,” Mr. O’Leary said.

Still rescuing hostages. His fellow agents.

UPDATE 08/08/2025:  The Drizz has been fired.

MSNBC: “Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director who refused to carry out Trump admin’s plans for mass firing of J6 agents, sent a message to colleagues: “Last night I was informed that tomorrow will be my last day in the FBI. I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I currently have no answers. No cause has been articulated at this time. Please know that it has been the honor of my life to serve alongside each of you. Thank you for allowing me to stand on your shoulders throughout it all. Our collective sacrifices for those we serve is, and will always be, worth it. I regret nothing. You are my heroes, and I remain in your debt.”

  Meidas Touch

We wish him well and prosperous, as we thank him for his invaluable service.