James Dennehy, who leads the FBI New York Field Office, revealed to his staff on Monday that he was forced to step down, a move that comes after he resisted directives from President Donald Trump’s appointees at the Department of Justice.
Dennehy wrote in a message to his staff, which was reviewed by the Washington Examiner, that he was told late on Friday that he was to retire on Monday. He “was not given a reason for this decision,” he wrote.
“I’ve been told many times in my life, ‘When you find yourself in a hole, sometimes it’s best to quit digging.’ Screw that,” Dennehy wrote. “I will never stop defending this joint. I’ll just do it willingly and proudly from outside the wire.”
Dennehy is a Marine veteran who joined the bureau in 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11 and worked on counterintelligence cases in New York. He ascended to assistant director in charge of the field office last year.
Dennehy’s resignation comes after the New York Times reported that Dennehy vowed to his staff to “dig in” in the face of DOJ acting No. 2 Emil Bove ordering the FBI last month to create a list of names of the thousands of employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases for possible personnel action. Dennehy lamented in an email to his staff at the time, according to the outlet, that “good people” were being pushed out of the bureau while others were “being targeted because they did their jobs.”
Bove’s demand came as part of the Trump DOJ’s efforts to review nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 cases for any overzealous investigative activity, a desire that aligns with Trump’s executive action deeming the entire four-year investigation and prosecution of violent and nonviolent Jan. 6 rioters a “grave national injustice.”
Retired FBI agents have told the Washington Examiner that mass firings would be detrimental to national security and that most employees follow orders that come either directly from the DOJ or from the seventh floor of FBI headquarters. Bove has since clarified that employees who followed orders have nothing to worry about.
Dennehy’s office also became the target of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ire last week following the DOJ’s chaotic rollout of an initial batch of files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case. Bondi had vowed to release the files but ended up publishing only 200 pages from Epstein’s case, which likely involves hundreds of thousands of pages or more of documents and other discovery material.
The 200 pages contained information, such as Epstein’s flight logs, that were already made public through media and through Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal case, during which she was convicted of conspiring to sexually abuse minors.
Bondi alleged that a “source” informed her that the FBI New York Field Office was withholding “thousands of pages” from her related to the case, and she ordered newly-confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate the matter and provide her with any outstanding material by Friday. It remains unclear what files Bondi believed the New York office was improperly withholding.
Dennehy said in his resignation message to his staff that he regretted he was unable to fulfill a commitment he made to serve for a full two years as head of the field office, and he praised his employees for always doing “the right thing.”
BONDI ACCUSES FBI OF WITHHOLDING ‘THOUSANDS OF PAGES’ OF EPSTEIN FILES
“But as I leave today, I have an immense feeling of pride – to have represented an office of professionals who will always do the right thing for the right reasons … who will never bend, break, falter, or quit on your integrity; who will always handle cases and evidence with an overabundance of caution and care for the innocent, the victims, and the process first; and who will always remain independent,” Dennehy wrote.
The FBI declined to comment on Dennehy’s resignation.
