9 FBI employees who investigated Trump sue over firings and allege retaliation

cbsnews.com

Washington — Nine former FBI employees sued the bureau on Thursday, saying they were unlawfully terminated merely for working on former special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into President Trump's retention of classified records after his first term in the White House. The former special agents, intelligence analysts and staff operation specialists worked on counterintelligence investigations and were fired over the course of two days in February 2026 — just as the United States and Israel were set to begin military strikes against Iran. The nine plaintiffs represent the latest in a growing number of former FBI agents and other personnel who have filed lawsuits against the Justice Department and the bureau after they were abruptly terminated. Many of the fired employees worked on matters that displeased Mr. Trump and his allies. The plaintiffs "were unlawfully terminated not for any cause or any legitimate reason, but only to satisfy the President's personal vendetta," the lawsuit alleged. "The firings did not follow any internal investigation or disciplinary process within the FBI, and Plaintiffs were not given any notice, a hearing, or an opportunity to appeal. Instead, Patel claimed to rely solely upon 'Article II' to support the firings," the suit said, referring to FBI Director Kash Patel and Article II of the Constitution, which lays out the president's executive powers. The 70-page lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and names the FBI, Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice as defendants. CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department and FBI for comment. FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and allegedly recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings. In 2023, Smith's office indicted Mr. Trump on more than three dozen charges related to his alleged retention of the records and efforts to obstruct the government's attempts to get them back. The charges were ultimately dismissed by the federal judge overseeing the case, who said Smith was unlawfully appointed special counsel. The Justice Department formally abandoned its appeal of the ruling after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election. Thursday's lawsuit cites public comments made by top Justice Department officials and the president directed toward the plaintiffs as evidence the firings were motivated by political animus.  For example, Blanche, who was deputy attorney general when the employees were let go, stated that the administration had "cleaned house" at the FBI by firing employees associated with investigations involving the president. The lawsuit contains some new details about the circumstances surrounding the firings. In the case of counterintelligence section chief Jennifer Bacon, she learned she was being let go shortly after an agent named Miles Starr had requested access to the classified investigative files about Plasmic Echo, the codename given to the documents investigation. Starr, the lawsuit said, was a member of Kash Patel's Director's Advisory Team, a group staffed by agents from around the country who support his policy goals.  He also was the lead case agent who testified in the since-dismissed indictment charging former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress. That testimony later was criticized by a federal magistrate judge, who accused the FBI of numerous missteps, including a failure to filter out potentially privileged materials. On Feb. 23, Starr emailed Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky to tell him that he urgently needed access to the Plasmic Echo case files, the lawsuit said.  "Starr did not explain what he needed, but stated that he was on instructions from Patel to access the case file. Bacon granted him access to all Plasmic Echo files in the FBI's case management system, with the exception of one specific subfile. The files Starr had access to contained the names of all nine Plaintiffs," the lawsuit says. Less than 48 hours later, Bacon and the others were all fired. The lawsuit also suggested that the firings may have been an attempt to distract from negative press about Patel, who was spotted on Feb. 22 at the Olympic Games in Milan "chugging a beer and, in a display of wild immaturity and lack of personal control, flinging alcohol around the U.S. men's hockey team's locker room." A special agent in charge who was assigned to inform former special agent Zach Feldman he was being terminated even surmised that the firing might be "related to the news reports from earlier that day about Director Patel drinking alcohol at the Winter Olympics," the lawsuit said. The military strikes against Iran began on Feb. 28. "This scandal proved politically perilous for Patel: he drew widespread criticism for his conduct, with numerous sources suggesting that his status with President Trump and position as Director of the FBI were in jeopardy as a result," the lawsuit said. On Feb. 25, Patel gave an interview to Reuters in which he disclosed that his phone records and those of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles were subpoenaed as part of Smith's investigations. Eight of the nine plaintiffs were fired the same day, and the ninth was fired the following day. "With over a century of experience among them, these former FBI agents and analysts served our country with honor and distinction as they investigated leaks of national security and defense information, thwarted threats and attacks from our enemies, and responded to critical incidents like the Boston Marathon bombing," attorneys Margaret Donovan, Abbe Lowell and Rebecca Tinio said in a joint statement. "In return for their service, they were fired because they did their jobs, as they always did, to follow the facts and the law without bias or favor." This article originally appeared on CBS News at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-employees-trump-classified-documents-case-lawsuit/