President Donald Trump’s administration has had mixed success in federal court challenges of its executive orders and broader agenda since January.
However, a judge has just handed the president a noteworthy win.
As The Hill reports, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb granted a Trump administration request to dismiss a lawsuit brought for the purpose of blocking the release of names of FBI agents who performed work on Jan. 6-related cases.
Plaintiffs filed their complaint in February, soon after a handful of career FBI officials were dismissed by the new administration.
The firings came after then-Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove demanded a list of all agents previously engaged in cases related to the protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The complainants sued to stop the administration from publicly identifying those who performed investigative work on cases brought against those who demonstrated in Washington on the fateful day in question.
The case was brought by two separate groups of anonymous FBI agents who contended that their identities were at risk of exposure and that their safety could, as a result, be in jeopardy.
The agents further argued that if their names were made public, they and their families could be targets of those they had been tasked with investigating, and that such disclosures would represent a violation of federal privacy law as well as protections enshrined in the Constitution, as Reuters explained.
On Thursday, however, Judge Cobb, a Joe Biden appointee, dismissed the agents’ case.
The judge declared the risk that the Justice Department would disclose their names was simply “too speculative” for the lawsuit to proceed.
Cobb voiced sympathy with the agents’ concerns, stating:
“Plaintiffs filed these cases in a whirlwind of chaos and fear.”
Cobb also noted that “some former January 6 defendants, now pardoned and at large, called for FBI agents to be doxed (or worse).”
However, Cobb added, “Since then, the dust has settled some – and this case has evolved.”
The judge went on to state that expedited discovery in the case “revealed no evidence that Defendants are on the verge of disclosing Plaintiffs’ identities, nor have Plaintiffs plausibly alleged that such a disclosure is imminent.”
As such, Cobb concluded, “The Court must therefore dismiss Plaintiffs’ disclosure-related claims.”
In the wake of the ruling, lawyers for the plaintiffs, Margaret Donovan and Chris Mattei, issued a statement expressing disappointment with the outcome.
“We are proud to defend the FBI employees who bravely investigated the January 6th attacks,” the attorneys said.
“The Court acknowledged that the disclosure of the agents’ names would endanger them and accepted the Government’s claims that it would not do so.
“We stand ready to return to Court immediately if the Government does not live up to its obligations.”
Officials inside the Trump DOJ have not explicitly ruled out the possibility of public disclosure of agent names, and although they have declared that there are no immediate plans to do so, whether that continues to be the case in the weeks and months to come is something that remains to be seen.
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