WASHINGTON — Three former top FBI officials sued FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, saying their firings were mandated by the White House and Department of Justice and that Patel followed their orders to keep his job.
Patel, the suit claimed, "explained he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President. Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because 'the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.'"
Patel also stated that the firings were retaliatory, according to the lawsuit, which alleges that he told Driscoll that "all FBI employees who they identified who had worked on the cases against President Trump would be removed from their jobs, regardless of their retirement eligibility status.”
According to the lawsuit, Patel — a Trump loyalist and former White House and DOJ official — told Driscoll that he knew such firings violated FBI rules designed to protect agents from being fired or otherwise retaliated against for having worked on specific investigations.
“Patel acknowledged that this would be in direct violation of internal FBI processes," the lawsuit says. "He again commented that he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed."
Patel's private statements as alleged in the lawsuit would be in direct contradiction to his testimony during his Senate confirmation hearing. Speaking under oath, Patel told senators that “all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.”
The lawsuit was filed by Driscoll; Steven Jensen, former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office; and Spencer Evans, former special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office. News of the lawsuit was first reported by NPR and MSNBC.
The lawsuit also says that certain agents were singled out for removal. For instance, it alleges that Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino ordered Jensen to fire a specific agent who was a target of the Trump White House.
The agent, Walt Giardina, had worked on Jack Smith and Robert Mueller’s special counsel probes of Trump. But Giardina, who had a good reputation among fellow agents, had also investigated both Democrats and Republicans in other public corruption cases, the suit says.
Political loyalty test
The suit also says that when the Trump transition team vetted Driscoll to potentially serve as acting deputy FBI director he was asked questions that he considered a political loyalty test.
Driscoll said he was asked which candidate he had voted for in recent elections, including whether he had voted for any Democrats. He was also asked if he agreed that agents who searched Trump's Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, for classified documents should be held “accountable.”
Patel later told Driscoll that he would need to pass a review by the transition team if he was interested in serving in the FBI's headquarters. Patel, according to the lawsuit, said that "as long as Driscoll was not prolific on social media, did not donate to the Democratic Party, and did not vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, the 'vetting' would not be an issue."
According to the suit, Driscoll declined to answer all of the questions that he considered inappropriately political. He ultimately was appointed to the acting director position because Emil Bove, who was at the time set to be acting deputy attorney general, said that Driscoll could be trusted. A former FBI agent, Michael Clark, also vouched for Driscoll and Robert Kissane, who was appointed acting deputy director.
Bove's search for Jan. 6 investigators
Bove later played a central role in carrying out what the lawsuit says were retaliatory firings. According to the suit, Bove told Driscoll a week after Trump took office that Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, was pushing him to carry out firings in the FBI on the same scale as Bove had conducted in the Justice Department.
In a meeting in late January, Bove told Driscoll and Kissane to give him a list of all FBI employees who were associated with investigations of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Bove also asked for the names of what he called a “core case team,” but no such team existed, according to the lawsuit.
Driscoll said that thousands of FBI agents had been involved in the investigations and warned that if such "a list were ever leaked or made public," the FBI staffers on it "would potentially face threats." Bove replied that he believed there was "cultural rot" within the FBI, according to the lawsuit.
Driscoll and Kissane said they would not provide the list to Bove without being given a lawful reason to do so. Bove responded that "he was above Driscoll and Kissane in the chain-of-command," the suit says, that "he was giving them a direct order to provide the list of names" and that "he could terminate FBI personnel even in the absence of an allegation of misconduct."
After consulting with the FBI's legal counsel, Driscoll and Kissane compiled and handed over the list.
Bongino's social media focus
The lawsuit also says that Bongino, who had been a Secret Service agent and then a pro-Trump podcaster before being named deputy director this year, considered certain investigations with political significance to be priorities.
Bongino asked Jensen for briefings on the search for the individual who planted a pipe bomb on the morning of Jan. 6, the leaker of the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and the discovery of cocaine in the White House during the Biden administration.
The suit says that Bongino frequently discussed those three cases in media interviews and on his social media feed, as well as internally.
During certain briefings, according to the suit, "Jensen became alarmed at Bongino’s intense focus on increasing online engagement through his social media profiles in an effort to change his followers’ perception of the FBI. Jensen was concerned that the emphasis Bongino placed on creating content for his social media pages could risk outweighing more deliberate analyses of investigations."
Driscoll, Jensen and Evans want a federal judge to declare their termination from the FBI “a legal nullity,” want a “name-clearing hearing,” and want their jobs back.
The FBI declined to comment on the suit. A representative for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
