3 fired FBI officials sue Patel, saying he bowed to Trump
administration's 'campaign of retribution'
[September 11, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Three high-ranking FBI officials were fired last month
in a “campaign of retribution” carried out by a director who knew better
but caved to political pressure from the Trump administration, according
to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that describes the White House as
directly meddling in the bureau's personnel moves
The complaint says Director Kash Patel told one of the ousted agents,
Brian Driscoll, that he knew it was “likely illegal” to fire agents
based on cases they worked but was powerless to stop it because the
White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all
agents who investigate President Donald Trump. It quotes Patel as having
told Driscoll in a conversation last month that “the FBI tried to put
the president in jail and he hasn't forgotten it.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer
Evans, three of five agents known to have been fired last month in a
purge that current and former officials say has unnerved the workforce.
The legal challenge from officials who once occupied the top rungs of
the bureau's leadership ladder, and who together had decades of law
enforcement experience, paints a portrait of an agency whose personnel
decisions are shaped more by political considerations than public safety
ones.
“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize
politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the suit
says. It adds that “his decision to do so degraded the country’s
national security by firing three of the FBI’s most experienced
operational leaders, each of them experts in preventing terrorism and
reducing violent crime.”
Spokespeople for the FBI declined to comment on the lawsuit, as they
also did after the agents were ousted.
Concerns of reputational damage
The suit was filed in federal court in Washington, where judges and
grand juries have pushed back against Trump administration initiatives
and charging decisions. It names as defendants Patel and Attorney
General Pam Bondi, as well as the FBI, the Justice Department and the
Executive Office of the President.
Besides reinstatement, the suit seeks, among other remedies, the
awarding of back pay, an order declaring the firings illegal and even a
forum for them to clear their names. It notes that Patel, in a Fox News
Channel interview two weeks after the terminations, said “every single
person” found to have weaponized the FBI had been removed from
leadership positions, even though the suit says there's no indication
any of the three had done so.
“This false and defamatory public smear impugned the professional
reputation of each of the Plaintiffs, suggesting they were something
other than faithful and apolitical law enforcement officials, and has
caused not only the loss of the Plaintiffs’ present government
employment but further harmed their future employment prospects,” the
suit states.
Unnerving requests from leadership
The three fired officials, according to the lawsuit, had participated in
and supervised some of the FBI's most complex work, including
international terrorism investigations.
“They were pinnacles of what the rank-and-file aspired to, and now the
FBI has been deprived not only of that example but has been deprived of
very important operational competence,” said Chris Mattei, one of the
agents' lawyers. “Their firing from the FBI, taken together, has put
every American at greater risk than when Brian Driscoll, Steve Jensen
and Spencer Evans were in positions of leadership.”
Another of their attorneys, Abbe Lowell, said the lawsuit shows FBI
leadership is “carrying out political orders to punish law enforcement
agents for doing their jobs.”
Perhaps the most prominent of the plaintiffs is Driscoll, a former
commander of the FBI's specialized hostage rescue team who served as
acting director between when then-Director Christopher Wray resigned in
January and Patel was confirmed in February.
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An FBI agent walks inside the front entrance of ex-Trump national
security adviser John Bolton's Washington office, Aug 22, 2025. (AP
Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
In that job, he had a well-publicized standoff in the first days of
the Trump administration with a senior Justice Department official,
Emil Bove, over Bove's demand for a list of agents who worked on the
investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of Trump
supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Driscoll pushed back against the
order, prompting Bove to accuse him of “insubordination.”
Driscoll survived the dispute and took another high-profile position
overseeing the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group, or CIRG,
which deploys to crises. But new problems arose last month, the
complaint says, when an FBI pilot whose duties included flying the
bureau's private jet was falsely identified on social media as
having signed the search warrant for the investigation into Trump's
hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm
Beach, Florida.
The complaint says Driscoll was told that the pilot, Chris Meyer,
could no longer fly Patel on the FBI plane. Driscoll acceded to the
request but refused to strip Meyer entirely of his pilot duties and
balked when told of the Trump administration’s desires to fire him.
The lawsuit recounts a conversation from early August in which
Driscoll told Patel that it would be illegal to fire someone based
on case assignments. Patel, according to the suit, said he
understood the actions were “likely illegal” and risked opening him
to lawsuits but that he had to fire those whom his superiors wanted
him to “because his ability to keep his own job depended on the
removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President.”
Meyer was among the five fired last month, but is not one of the
plaintiffs in Wednesday's suit.
One of the plaintiffs, Jensen, was picked by Patel to run the
bureau's Washington field office despite a backlash from Trump
loyalists about his earlier leadership role coordinating
investigations into the Capitol riot. The suit says that even as
Jensen was publicly defended by FBI leadership, he was told by Patel
and Deputy Director Dan Bongino that they were spending “a lot of
political capital” to keep him in the position.
In May, according to the complaint, Bongino told him he would have
to fire an agent assigned to his office who'd worked on
Trump-related cases but also on investigations into officials of
both major political parties. That agent, Walter Giardina, was also
among those fired last month.
Another plaintiff, Evans, says he was targeted for retribution over
his leadership role in the FBI's Human Resources Division during the
onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made him responsible for
reviewing accommodation requests from employees seeking exemption
from vaccine mandates.
That position exposed Evans to a barrage of criticism from a former
agent, who, the lawsuit says, regularly aired his grievances against
Evans on social media and maintained access to Patel.
Evans was among the senior executives told in late January to either
retire or be fired, but he was given a reprieve and permitted to
remain in his job. Despite being reassured that he had the support
of Patel and Bongino, he was told in May that he would have to leave
his position as head of the Las Vegas field office.
On Aug. 6, the lawsuit says, Evans was packing for a new FBI
assignment in Huntsville, Alabama, when he was notified he had been
fired. The stated cause was a “lack of reasonableness and
overzealousness” in implementing COVID-19 protocols, though the suit
says he has no recollection of having ever denied a request for a
vaccination exemption.
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