President Donald Trump's Justice Department recently ordered the FBI to turn over a list of all its agents and employees who'd worked in any capacity on Jan. 6 Capitol riot cases or the Jan. 6-related investigation and prosecution of Trump himself by ex-Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Senior FBI officials reportedly complied by a Tuesday deadline and submitted a list with pertinent details for more than 5,000 agents and employees who'd been assigned to Jan. 6 cases, according to CNN.

At the same time that list was handed over, a group of anonymous FBI workers filed lawsuits to block the list of Jan. 6-linked agents and employees from being publicized or used for retribution.

FBI turns over requested list of Jan. 6-linked agents and employees

On President Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order on "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government" that called out how the prior administration had waged a "systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions."

The order specifically highlighted how the previous Biden-Harris DOJ "ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6" while at the same time dropping most criminal cases against leftist protesters and rioters associated with groups like Black Lives Matter.

Trump followed that up with pardons and commutations for all 1,500+ individuals who'd been prosecuted in relation to Jan. 6, and shortly after that, his former personal defense attorney turned acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, instructed the FBI to turn over all relevant information on the agents and analysts who'd worked on those cases.

According to CNN and its anonymous sources, the FBI complied by Tuesday's deadline and submitted a list of more than 5,000 agents and employees, and though that list did not include any names, it did feature employee ID numbers, their job titles, and the particular roles they played in Jan. 6 investigations and prosecutions.

That is roughly 10% of the FBI's entire workforce, which is estimated to number around 51,000 and includes approximately 13,000 agents and roughly 38,000 other employees.

Lawsuits filed to block list

Meanwhile, according to Politico, on the same day that FBI officials submitted the requested list of Jan. 6-associated agents and employees to the DOJ, at least two class-action lawsuits were filed by anonymous agents and employees to block any further action involving that list.

The lawsuits claimed that the list formed the basis of an impending retaliation campaign and expressed concerns that, if made public, the individuals on that list could be subjected to targeted harassment, threats, or worse.

"Plaintiffs legitimately fear that the information being compiled will be accessed by persons who are not authorized to have access to it," one of the lawsuits argued. "Plaintiffs further assert that even if they are not targeted for termination, they may face other retaliatory acts such as demotion, denial of job opportunities, or denial of promotions in the future."

Lawsuits assigned to Biden-appointed D.C. judge

Ironically enough, according to Newsweek, both of those FBI lawsuits were assigned to the same federal district judge in Washington D.C., Jia Cobb, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2021.

Cobb, who is supposedly nonpartisan, has presided over several Jan. 6 cases and sentenced several defendants to prison, so a request for her recusal from these tangentially linked Jan. 6 lawsuits over an apparent conflict of interest may be forthcoming from the Trump DOJ.

The judge scheduled an initial hearing on the lawsuits for Thursday but also ordered the DOJ to inform her of any actions it may take in relation to the lawsuits' claims, in which case she would hold the hearing earlier than planned.