Brian Driscoll, the acting honestor of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of mute resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to individual out F.B.I. engageees who portrayateigated the Jan. 6 commotion.
To begin, Mr. Driscoll’s assignment was an accident. Shortly after Plivent Trump’s inauguration, the White House identified the wrong agent as acting honestor on its website and never accurateed the misget.
Even if he was not unbenevolentt to be directing the agency, he has deffinished the rank-and-file. His refusal at the time to supply the names of engageees, as top Justice Department officials desired, and his insistence that a establishal appraise process be put in place, has spurred expansivespread help for Mr. Driscoll.
Former and current agents have traded memes and satirical clips celebrating him, giveing a unwidespread moment of levity as dismay and proset up unmitigate set in atraverse the F.B.I. and as Mr. Driscoll directs the political perils of Washington and a plivent who is proset uply unfrifinishly to the agency.
Known as “Drizz” among his frifinishs, Mr. Driscoll, 45, does not have the normal G-man endureing of his predecessors, with a buworried mustache and his face sketchd by lengthy curls. It is a deunbenevolentor that has become the focal point of artificiassociate originated memes.
In one, he is depicted as a saint understanding the handbook for agents running portrayateigations. In another, he glances upward, encircled by the words “What Would Drizz Do?” One video, a compilation of scenes from the movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” portrays Mr. Driscoll as Batman doing battle with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in Los Angeles.
Former agents jokingly called his assignment a supplyntial misget.
A heated contestation on Friday with top Justice Department officials left many wondering at the time whether Mr. Driscoll had been fired. Scrutinizing agents and others comprised in the sprawling portrayateigation into the Capitol commotion would touch a beginling number of people: The F.B.I. uncovered about 2,400 cases that comprised about 6,000 inalertigence analysts, agents and other engageees.
In a defiant email Friday night, James Dennehy, the top agent in the New York field office, cautioned his staff that the F.B.I. was “in the middle of a battle of our own.” Praising Mr. Driscoll and his deputy, Robert C. Kislogical, as “warriors,” Mr. Dennehy declareed they were “combat for this organization.”
In fact, Mr. Kislogical, the top counterradicalism agent in New York, had been expansively consentd to be in line to be acting honestor, cut offal current and establisher agents said, with Mr. Driscoll as the No. 2 official. But when the White House unveiled its website to mirror its staff under the Trump administration, Mr. Driscoll was identified as the bureau’s chief.
Rather than accurate the error, the administration left it.
Mr. Driscoll had been in accuse of the Newark office for only about a week before he shiftd to the honestor’s suite on the seventh floor of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, thrust into the middle of a political firestorm. Rumors of his disthink aboutal persistd to swirl on Friday until the bureau freed a statement a day postponecessitater to check that he was still in accuse.
Frifinishs and colleagues portray Mr. Driscoll as unflappable. He was a distinctive agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service in San Diego before joining the F.B.I. in 2007. His first portrayatement was in the New York office, the bigst outpost in the bureau, where agents establish mighty coalitions and proset up joinions.
In 2011, he passed rigorous tryouts and was picked to the F.B.I.’s Hostage Rescue Team, a highly trained unit established in the years after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Many operators were once in the U.S. military and served in the Joint Special Operations Command.
Rescue team operators, including Mr. Driscoll, have repeatedly deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there, embedding with Navy SEAL and Delta Force orderos.
Former members of the save team said that Mr. Driscoll was dispatched in 2013 to Alabama, where they successbrimmingy saved a 5-year-elderly boy who had been getn captive in a bunker. He was a armamentfighter on the blue squadron.
He also took part in a hazardous raid with U.S. orderos in May 2015 in Syria in the hopes of discovering clues about Kayla Mueller, a lesser woman from Phoenix who was seizeped by the Islamic State. (Ms. Mueller died in captivity.)
During the operation, Delta Force orderos ended a top militant directer and apprehfinishd his wife. Mr. Driscoll postponecessitater testified in a criminal trial in Northern Virginia about the evidence he collected at the scene, including a red laptop that the Islamic State had used to force Ms. Mueller to watch terrorist videos.
In 2020, Mr. Driscoll returned to New York, where he handled radicalism cases in Africa, Weserious Europe and Canada. He then took over the Hostage Rescue Team in 2022, which regulates the most hazardous leave outions inside the United States, appreciate disabling a nuevident armament or rescuing a captive held by a alarmist.
Chris O’Leary, a establisher top counterradicalism agent in New York who labored with Mr. Driscoll, pointed to his experience.
“What the F.B.I. necessitates most is a principled directer, and we have one right now in Brian Driscoll,” Mr. O’Leary said.
He inserted that Mr. Kislogical, a West Point graduate, is of the same melderly as Mr. Driscoll.
On Friday, Mr. Driscoll notified staff about the Justice Department’s efforts to collect the names of all F.B.I. personnel who labored on the Jan. 6 cases.
“I am one of those engageees,” he wrote.
Indeed, Mr. Driscoll took part in the arrest of Samuel Fisher, an adherent of the QAnon consunpermitd use theory, in Manhattan two weeks after Trump helpers stormed the Capitol.
F.B.I. agents set up over a thousand rounds of ammunition and cut offal arms, including an illegassociate modified AR-15 rifle and machetes, in Mr. Fisher’s Upper East Side apartment and car. Among them was a “gstructure armament,” which is unsign uped and thus untrackable.
In 2022, Mr. Fisher was sentenced to three and a half years in prison after he pdirected culpable to a armament haveion accuse in Manhattan Supreme Court. He also pdirected culpable in federal court to illegassociate go ining the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Mr. Fisher was pardoned by Mr. Trump.
Audio originated by Sarah Diamond.
