FBI’s top agent in Miami forced out by Trump’s Justice Department in escalating purge
Jeffrey Veltri was named as head of the FBI’s Miami field office in March 2023— seven months after federal agents raided Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate in a search for classified documents that he allegedly took to Mar-a-Lago after losing the presidency.
Now Veltri, the FBI’s special agent in charge, has been forced out in an escalating purge by senior officials in the Department of Justice who took over the agency after Trump was sworn in as president for a second term last month.
Veltri, like about a dozen high-ranking FBI officials in Washington, D.C., and in field offices around the country, was given an ultimatum: retire, resign or be fired by Monday. Veltri, 50, chose to resign on Friday, according to several sources familiar with his departure.
Veltri was immediately replaced in the Miami field office by an acting special agent in charge: Justin Fleck. He’s an 18-year FBI veteran who previously worked as a deputy in the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office after graduating from Florida State University.
It’s not clear why Veltri was forced out, because the FBI in Miami and Washington, D.C., won’t comment. He may have been targeted by the Justice Department because his field office was actively involved in the Trump classified documents case — though it was run by special counsel Jack Smith and his team in Washington.
Veltri was leading the South Florida office when Trump was indicted in June 2023 on charges of withholding top secret documents from the U.S. government and conspiring with two of his Mar-a-Lago employees to obstruct efforts to retrieve them.
Miami is one of top FBI offices
Veltri ran one of the FBI’s biggest field offices in the country, with more than 400 special agents in the Southern District of Florida. During his nearly two-year tenure, his office gained attention for not only investigating the documents case, but the attempted assassination of Trump during his re-election campaign in September and developer Sergio Pino’s alleged hiring of hit teams to kill his wife. Pino ended up killing himself when FBI agents went to his Cocoplum home in Coral Gables to arrest him in July.
“We view this [assassination attempt] as extremely serious and are determined to provide answers as to what led up to the events that took place,” Veltri said at a news conference on Sept. 16, the day after the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was arrested in connection with the attempt on Trump’s life at his golf club in West Palm Beach.
“I want to emphasize we are just a little over 24 hours into this investigation, so we are going to provide as much as we can publicly while our investigation is ongoing,” Veltri added. “We must also stress the U.S. attorney’s office is pursuing charges, and that limits some details we can publicly disclose.”
Soon after, Fox News reported that Veltri had posted anti-Trump rhetoric on social media while he was working as a section chief in the Security Division at FBI headquarters before his transfer to Miami, according to a whistleblower’s account to Congress in 2023. But the FBI in Washington called these claims “demonstrably false.”
Before starting his career with the FBI more than two decades ago, Veltri served as an assistant public defender in the Broward County Pubic Defender’s Office. Veltri earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology from the University of South Florida and a law degree from the Widener University School of Law in Delaware.
FBI agents scrutinized after Jan. 6 investigations
The personnel shakeup at the FBI comes as hundreds of agents who worked on investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack and Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents are facing scrutiny by the Justice Department — in the aftermath of the president’s pardoning of about 1,300 convicted offenders in the Capitol riot investigation.
Now, the FBI agents assigned to those two cases could be forced out or punished — similar to the recent firings of dozens of career Justice Department lawyers, including prosecutor Michael Thakur in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, who worked on the documents probe.
U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe, a Haitian-American immigrant who became the first Black lawyer to serve in the most powerful federal law enforcement position in South Florida, resigned days before Trump took office.
READ MORE: Miami U.S. Attorney, first Haitian-American in post, to resign before Trump takes office
Patel’s testimony contradicts Justice Department’s actions
Senior officials in the Justice Department — even before Senate confirmation votes on Attorney General nominee Palm Bondi and FBI Director nominee Kash Patel — have moved quickly to deliver on Trump’s promise to strike back at what he has repeatedly described as the “weaponization” of the FBI and Justice Department during the Biden administration.
Patel, who previously worked in the state and federal public defenders’ offices in Miami before catching Trump’s eye, said he didn’t know of any upcoming personnel plans at the FBI during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination last Thursday.
“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” asked Sen. Cory Booker, the Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey.
“I am not aware of that, senator,” Patel replied.
That very day, behind the scenes, senior officials in the Justice Department told about a dozen high-ranking FBI officials in Washington, Miami and elsewhere to leave or be fired.
This story was originally published February 4, 2025 at 8:17 AM.
