Jesse Scheckner
Less than two years after he was named special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Miami field office, Jeffrey Veltri is out of a job.
He was among roughly a dozen top FBI officials who, as part of an effort by President Donald Trump to rid the government of unloyal actors, were told to either resign, retire or face termination.
Veltri chose to step down of his own accord, the Miami Herald reported, “citing sources familiar with his departure.”
Veltri, 50, lives in Parkland and is a registered member of the Independent Party, state records show. The 18-year veteran of the agency took over the FBI’s Miami office in March 2023, seven months after federal agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in search of improperly held classified documents.
The FBI has not explained the reasoning for Veltri’s ouster. Late last week, acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll said that acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense attorney, instructed him to remove eight senior executives within the agency and turn over the names of every FBI employee involved in the Jan. 6 riot investigation.
Trump pardoned nearly all of the 1,600 people charged in connection with the riot, including dozens with criminal records that included rape, child abuse and domestic violence, and people who attacked officers at the U.S. Capitol.
Bove’s order came by memo. It included four top FBI managers and two field chiefs, including Veltri and David Sundberg in Washington, D.C.
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney, told NBC News the firings are illegal.
“Career federal employees can be fired for conduct or performance issues, not because they failed to demonstrate political loyalty to the current incumbent of the White House,” she told the outlet. “Trump ignored controlling law and regulations to do this, and unless the Supreme Court changes their interpretation, any firing of permanent members of the civil service should not stand.”
Vance’s comments did not address what recourse federal employees who left voluntarily would have.
Veltri, who served as an Assistant Public Defender in Broward County before joining the FBI more than 20 years ago, oversaw a field office of more than 400 special agents. Recent cases the office led included Trump’s handling of classified documents, the attempted assassination of the President in September and a murder-for-hire plot by developer Sergio Pino.
Justin Fleck, who recently celebrated 18 months with the FBI, has taken over the Miami office as acting special agent in charge. He’s already updated his LinkedIn profile, which shows he worked for seven years as a deputy and detective at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office before joining the FBI in early 2007.
Fleck has spent the preponderance of his FBI career in South Florida, where he previously served as the Miami office’s deputy special agent in charge.
