The Trump administration was sued Tuesday in two separate civil complaints related to a request for information about FBI employees who worked on cases involving President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and a third suit challenging the removal of data from federal health agency websites.
The lawsuits are the latest in a growing number of legal salvos seeking to block — or slow down — the rapid-fire series of executive actions Trump and his allies have taken since he returned to the White House on Jan. 20.
The three cases were filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The first case, a class-action complaint, was filed by a group of nine unidentified FBI agents and employees of the agency against the Department of Justice.
That suit seeks to block the publication or dissemination of information in surveys the plaintiffs or their supervisors have been ordered to fill out identifying “their specific role” in cases involving the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot criminal cases, and the criminal prosecution of Trump himself for retaining classified records after leaving the White House in early 2021.
The suit says the survey was issued “to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer adverse employment action.”
“Upon returning to the Presidency, Mr. Trump has ordered the DOJ to conduct a review and purge of FBI personnel involved in these investigations and prosecutions,” the suit says.
“This directive is unlawful and retaliatory, and violates the Civil Service Reform Act.”
The suit says the plaintiffs “reasonably fear that all or parts” of a list of FBI agents who worked on the Jan. 6 and Trump cases “might be published by allies of President Trump, thus placing themselves and their families in immediate danger of retribution by the now-pardoned and at-large Jan. 6 convicted felons.”
The complaint says that some of the plaintiffs’ personal information “has already been posted by Jan. 6 convicted felons on ‘dark websites.'”
A second suit, filed by the FBI Agents Association and seven unnamed agents against the DOJ, also notes the survey requesting information about whether the agents worked on Jan. 6-related criminal investigations.
That complaint asks a judge to protect the plaintiffs “from Defendants’ anticipated retaliatory decision to expose their personal information for opprobrium and potential vigilante action by those who they were investigating.”
An attorney for the agents in the second suit, Chris Mattei of Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder, said in a statement, “The DOJ’s plan to release the names of FBI agents who investigated January 6th is an appalling attack on non-partisan public servants who have dedicated their lives to protecting our communities and our nation.”
“It is clear that the threatened disclosure is a prelude to an unlawful purge of the FBI solely driven by the Trump Administration’s vengeful and political motivations,” said Mattei. “Releasing the names of these agents would ignite a firestorm of harassment towards them and their families and it must be stopped immediately.”
CNBC has requested comment from the DOJ on the suits.
The third lawsuit was filed by the advocacy group Doctors for America against the Office of Personnel Management, the Health and Human Services Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration.
That complaint challenges the abrupt removal Friday from CDC and FDA websites “a broad range of health-related data and other information.”
Zach Shelley, an attorney for Public Citizen Litigation Group, which is representing Doctors for America in the suit, told CNBC that “without the information that the CDC and these other agencies have taken down, more people are going to get sick, more people are going to suffer and more people are going to die.”
Shelley said that under the Trump administration, “agencies are taking action that undermines their stated mission.”
The suit says that data is regularly used by “health professionals to diagnose and treat patients and by researchers to advance public health, including through clinical trials meant to establish the safety and efficacy of medical products.”
The removal of the data came two days after Charles Ezell, OPM’s acting director, issued a memo that ordered federal agency heads to “terminate” programs “that promote or inculcate gender ideology” and remove all websites, social media accounts and other media that have that goal.
Ezell’s order came more than a week after Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
The suit says that before that unannounced removal, the datasets had been on the websites for years.
Their removal “creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients,” the suit says.
The CDC removed web pages for its Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System, pages devoted to data on “Adolescent and School Health,” as well as pages for “The Social Vulnerability Index” and “The Environmental Justice Index,” according to the suit.
Also removed was a report and web pages related to HIV infections, the complaint says.
The FDA removed several pages, including one titled “Study of Sex Differences in the Clinical Evaluation
of Medical Products,” and another titled “Diversity Action Plans to Improve Enrollment of
Participants from Underrepresented Populations in Clinical Studies.”
“The decisions by CDC, FDA, and HHS to remove the webpages and datasets contradict their stated missions and are causing and will cause substantial harm to Plaintiff and its members, as well as other physicians, researchers, and patients who rely on the removed webpages and datasets,” the suit says.
Spokespeople for OPM, HHS and CDC declined to comment on the lawsuit. The media affairs office of FDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
