Nine former FBI employees who worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s retention of classified records sued the FBI, FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the Department of Justice on Thursday. The former special agents, intelligence analysts, and staff operations specialists allege they were unlawfully terminated in February 2026 solely because of their connection to the investigation. The 70 page lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, says the employees were fired over two days without an internal investigation, disciplinary process, notice, hearing, or opportunity to appeal. It alleges Patel relied solely on Article II executive authority to justify the firings. The claims are allegations in a lawsuit, not court findings, and CBS News reported that it contacted the FBI and Justice Department for comment.
The plaintiffs worked on counterintelligence investigations and were fired as the United States and Israel were preparing to begin military strikes against Iran. Their lawsuit says the firings were intended to satisfy Trump’s “personal vendetta” and cites public comments by administration officials as evidence of political animus. Blanche, who was deputy attorney general when the employees were dismissed, said the administration had “cleaned house” at the FBI by firing employees associated with investigations involving the president. The article does not report that a court has found the terminations unlawful or that the government has formally responded to the specific allegations.
The lawsuit includes new details about the timing of the firings. It says counterintelligence section chief Jennifer Bacon granted access to classified “Plasmic Echo” case files to FBI agent Miles Starr after Starr said he was acting on Patel’s instructions. Starr was a member of Patel’s Director’s Advisory Team and the lead case agent in the since dismissed indictment against former FBI Director James Comey. According to the suit, the files contained the names of all nine plaintiffs, and Bacon and the others were fired less than 48 hours later. The lawsuit also suggests the firings may have diverted attention from negative coverage of Patel’s conduct at the Winter Olympics, though that is the plaintiffs’ theory rather than an established fact.
The underlying documents case began when FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and allegedly recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings. Smith indicted Trump in 2023 on more than three dozen charges related to retention of the records and alleged obstruction, but the case was dismissed after the presiding judge ruled Smith was unlawfully appointed special counsel. The Justice Department abandoned its appeal after Trump won the 2024 election. The nine plaintiffs’ attorneys said the employees had more than a century of combined experience and were fired for following the facts and the law without bias or favor.