President Donald Trump‘s acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, issued the directives, which sent shockwaves across the bureau just before the weekend. Bove ordered the FBI to dismiss eight executive-level officials and demanded a list of names by Tuesday of anyone else who had any interactions with the Jan. 6 investigation, according to an email.

PRICES ON THESE ITEMS COULD BE AFFECTED BY TRUMP TARIFFS ON MEXICO, CANADA

Multiple people confirmed to the Washington Examiner that FBI acting Director Brian Driscoll sent the email to the bureau, saying that such a list would include “thousands of employees across the country.”

In addition to anyone involved with the wide-ranging Jan. 6 investigation, Driscoll said Bove also unexpectedly asked for names of people involved with a case in New York that was unsealed in September against Ismail Haniyeh and others, who are alleged members of the Hamas terrorist group.

Driscoll wrote that he and his deputy, Robert Kissane, will both be named on the list he provides to Bove. Driscoll wrote that he would provide more information to the bureau once he had it and that he planned to “follow the law, follow FBI policy, and do what’s in the best interest of the workforce and the American people — always.”

The Society of Former Agents of the FBI, which comprises 8,500 members, including a couple hundred current members, believed the directives were “pretty outrageous” and that a mass culling at the FBI would be “disastrous.”

“Do you know what that would do to national security alone?” the society’s president, Mike Clark, told the Washington Examiner.

Clark added that he was concerned that those in the society who are also still working at the bureau “seem to have been treated unfairly and are randomly being singled out and terminated without cause.”

Two sources said some of the FBI agents who will be included on the list are those now involved in the investigation into the recent plane collision in Washington, D.C., that claimed the lives of 67 people. One described the initial terminations and anticipated additional firings as an internal “bloodbath.”

The FBI said it is declining to comment on any questions regarding personnel matters.

The bureau was not the only agency to see a shake-up late on Friday. In a memo shared online by Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller, Bove also ordered the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to terminate prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases. Politico reported that that number included more than two dozen DOJ lawyers.

The memo indicated that the prosecutors were initially “term” employees who had been brought into the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington in recent years specifically to work on Jan. 6 cases.

Days earlier, the DOJ also abruptly fired a swath of career prosecutors who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s team, prompting some legal experts to raise concerns that the prosecutors were legally entitled to more notice.

The ousters mark a dramatic escalation by Trump to retaliate against those he believes had improper political motivations to bring criminal charges against him or his supporters who attacked the Capitol.

Trump has long described the FBI as “weaponized” against him and his supporters and described the Jan. 6 perpetrators, including those who attacked police officers, as “hostages” whom the DOJ wrongly targeted. Some critics of the Jan. 6 cases have said the DOJ was unusually heavy-handed with the rioters who committed misdemeanors.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Trump told a reporter Friday when asked about the recent dismissals and the possibility of many more that he was not aware of them.

“But we have some very bad people over there. It was weaponized at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “They came after a lot of people like me, but they came after a lot of people. No, I wasn’t involved in that. I’ll have to see what is exactly going on after this is finished.”