Three FBI agents sue claiming Kash Patel fired them to appease Trump's revenge plot
FBI Director Kash Patel is being sued by three former high-ranking bureau employees who claim their boss caved to political pressure from President Donald Trump to fire them.
The officials say their ouster was a 'campaign of retribution' carried out by Director Patel to keep his own position in the administration, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
Brian Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer Evans are seeking reinstatement at the FBI.
The three agents were fired last month in the continued purge of those who were involved in cases and investigations into Trump.
Driscoll resisted demands to hand over a list of FBI agents who worked on investigations into the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Meanwhile, Jensen was section chief of the division that took over investigations into the attack, and Evans believes he was ousted for his role in reviewing accommodation requests from employees seeking exemption from COVID-19 vaccine requirements.
Driscoll claims that Patel suggested directly to him that the terminations were 'likely illegal' but that he was unable to stop them because the White House and Justice Department were determined to get rid of anyone who was assigned cases involving the president.
The lawsuit claims that Patel told Driscoll in a conversation last month 'the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn't forgotten it.'
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment when reached by the Daily Mail.
Three fired FBI agents filed a lawsuit against former boss Director Kash Patel for terminating them for the cases they were assigned to work that investigated Donald Trump
Perhaps the most well-known of the plaintiffs, Brian Driscoll, served as acting FBI director between when former Director Christopher Wray resigned in January and before Patel was confirmed in February
The suit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. names Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI, DOJ and the Executive Office of the President and defendants.
Besides being given their jobs back, the three agents are also seeking back pay, an order declaring the firings illegal and a forum for them to clear their names.
In an interview two weeks after their firings, Patel told Fox News that 'every single person' that weaponized the FBI against Trump had been removed from leadership positions at the bureau.
But the lawsuit claims there is no proof that Driscoll, Jensen or Evans had weaponized their positions.
'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 lawsuit states.
Agents who were fired since Patel took over the FBI have leveled unflattering allegations against the agency.
They claim that the personnel moves are shaped directly by the White House and are motivated by politics rather than the interest of Americans' safety.
One of the plaintiff's attorneys, Abbe Lowell, said the lawsuit proves FBI leadership is 'carrying out political orders to punish law enforcement agents for doing their jobs.'
And another one of the agent's lawyers, Chris Mattei, said of the agents: '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.
'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.'
The new filing claims that the three officials were involved in and supervised some of the FBI's most complex investigations.
This includes investigations into international terrorism.
The lawsuit claims that Patel told Driscoll he understood it was 'likely illegal' to fire agents based on case assignments, but that 'his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President'
Steve Jensen (right) and Spencer Evans (left) are among the five known agents who were fired last month for their involvement in cases investigating Trump
Driscoll, who is perhaps the most well-known of the plaintiffs, served as commander of the FBI's specialized hostage rescue team. He was also acting director between when former Director Christopher Wray resigned in January and before Patel was confirmed in February.
In his role taking helm at the FBI, Driscoll had very public stand-offs in the first few days of the second Trump administration with senior DOJ official Emil Bove.
Specifically it involved Driscoll resisting Bove's demand for the FBI to hand over a list of agents who worked on investigations into the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
After Patel was confirmed, Driscoll took a position overseeing the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG), which deploys to crises.
Problems arose last month when an FBI pilot was falsely identified on social media as being a case agent on the investigation into Trump transporting classified materials to his MAr-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida after leaving office in 2021.
Driscoll was told that pilot Chris Meyer, whose duties included flying the bureau's private jet, could no longer transport Patel on the FBI plane.
The lawsuit details that while Driscoll followed the order, he refused to strip Meyer of his pilot duties entirely and did not comply with Trump administration desires to have him fired.
Driscoll told Patel it would be illegal to fire someone based on case assignments.
The lawsuit says this is when Patel admitted to Driscoll that he understood it was 'likely illegal,' but that 'his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President.'
Meyer, like Driscoll, was ultimately fired but is not among the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit
Jensen was promoted in 2020 to Section Chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section of the Counterterrorism Division, which took over investigations related to criminal activity stemming from the January 6 attack.
The plaintiff claims in the lawsuit that while FBI leadership publicly defended him, Jensen was told by Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino that they were spending “a lot of political capital” to keep him in the position due to his role coordinating January 6 investigations.
And Evans believes he was targeted for ouster over his leadership at the FBI’s Human Resources Division during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was responsible for reviewing accommodation requests from employees seeking exemption from government vaccine requirements.
