Nine Fired FBI Employees Sue Patel and Blanche Over Trump Documents Case Work
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Nine former FBI employees sued the bureau, the Justice Department, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday, alleging they were unlawfully fired for their work on the investigation into President Donald Trump's handling of classified documents. They are asking a federal court to give them their jobs back and award back pay.
The case adds to a growing list of suits from former FBI personnel who say they were abruptly dismissed after working on matters tied to Trump, according to CBS News. Here is what the filing says and what remains unresolved.
Who filed the lawsuit, and where?
The plaintiffs are Jennifer Bacon, Zach Feldman, Gilbert Granados, Catherine Herrera, Harrison Kaufman, Jeremy Linton, Erin Matanic, Danielle Ray and Rachel Vaccaro, NBC News reported. CBS News said they include special agents, intelligence analysts and staff operations specialists. The 70-page complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The group says it has more than a century of combined FBI experience. According to the filing, their work included the Boston Marathon bombing and the investigation of the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
What does the suit say happened in February?
According to the complaint, as reported by CBS News, Bacon was a counterintelligence section chief. On Feb. 23, an agent named Miles Starr emailed an assistant director saying he urgently needed access to the files on Plasmic Echo, the code name for the documents investigation. The suit says Starr was a member of Patel's Director's Advisory Team and cited instructions from Patel. Bacon gave him access to nearly all of the files, which contained the names of all nine plaintiffs.
Less than 48 hours later, the suit says, Bacon and the others were fired. CBS News reported that eight were let go the same day and the ninth the following day. The suit says each received a termination letter signed by Patel that cited poor judgment and a lack of impartiality. It says there was no internal investigation, notice, hearing or chance to appeal, and that Patel relied only on Article II of the Constitution.
The plaintiffs also point to timing. They say the firings came as Patel faced criticism over video from Feb. 22 that showed him drinking and spraying alcohol in the U.S. men's hockey team's locker room at the Winter Olympics in Milan. CBS News reported that a special agent in charge who delivered the news to Feldman speculated the firing could be linked to coverage of that episode.
What do the officials named in the suit say?
The Justice Department and FBI had not responded to requests for comment from NBC News and CBS News, and a Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to ABC News. The only responses on record come from statements cited in the complaint.
NBC News reported that Patel later told Congress the employees were fired for cause after internal investigations. The suit says that is not true. The complaint also cites Blanche, who was deputy attorney general at the time of the firings. A month afterward, it says, he said the administration had "cleaned house" at the FBI and that no one who worked on the prosecution of Trump remained. The plaintiffs say such remarks, along with comments from Trump and Patel, damaged their reputations and show the firings were political.
What are the plaintiffs asking for?
The suit seeks reinstatement and back pay for the time the plaintiffs have missed, according to NBC News and ABC News. Their lawyers, Margaret Donovan, Abbe Lowell and Rebecca Tinio, said in a joint statement that the agents were fired because they followed the facts and the law without bias. The complaint itself says the firings served only a "personal vendetta" by the president.
What was the underlying documents case?
Per CBS News, FBI agents recovered more than 100 documents with classified markings at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. Special counsel Jack Smith's office charged Trump in 2023, and ABC News said the indictment included 42 counts of unlawfully retaining classified records. Trump pleaded not guilty and has denied wrongdoing. The judge overseeing the case dismissed it after ruling that Smith was not lawfully appointed, and the Justice Department dropped its appeal after Trump won the 2024 election.
Why does it matter?
The suit raises two questions: whether career federal employees can be removed without notice or a hearing, and whether the dismissals affected active work. The plaintiffs say some of them were on ongoing counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations that were not properly handed to other agents or analysts, and they describe the effect on national security as immeasurable. That is the plaintiffs' claim, and the government has not responded to it in the reports.
NBC News noted that two former FBI special agents filed a similar suit earlier this year over their limited roles in Smith's election-related investigation, known as Arctic Frost. Both cases will test whether courts accept the argument that such firings were improper.
