WASHINGTON — Three senior FBI officials who were dismissed last month filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday accusing FBI Director Kash Patel of carrying out a "campaign of retribution" at the behest of the Trump administration and seeking reinstatement, back pay and a declaration that the firings were unlawful.
The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, says Patel told one of the dismissed agents, Brian Driscoll, that he understood the removals were "likely illegal" but felt compelled to carry them out because the White House and the Department of Justice wanted all agents who worked on matters involving former President Donald Trump removed. The suit quotes Patel as saying in a conversation last month, "the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn't forgotten it." The plaintiffs are Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer Evans, three of five agents publicly known to have been fired in the recent personnel shakeup that current and former officials say has unsettled the bureau's workforce.
The suit names Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the FBI, the Justice Department and the Executive Office of the President as defendants. In addition to reinstatement and back pay, the complaint requests an order declaring the terminations illegal and a forum for the plaintiffs to clear their names. It also contends that Patel publicly defamed the agents in a Fox News interview two weeks after the firings by asserting that "every single person" found to have weaponized the FBI had been removed, a claim the suit says unfairly smeared the three plaintiffs.
Attorneys for the agents said the dismissals removed experienced operational leaders whose work included international terrorism investigations and crisis response, harming the bureau's ability to protect the public. "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," attorney Chris Mattei said in a statement accompanying the filing. Another lawyer for the plaintiffs, Abbe Lowell, said the suit demonstrates that some FBI leadership "is carrying out political orders to punish law enforcement agents for doing their jobs."
Driscoll, a former commander of the FBI's specialized hostage rescue team, briefly served as acting director after Christopher Wray's resignation in January and before Patel's confirmation in February. The complaint recounts Driscoll's earlier dispute with a senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove, over a demand for a list of agents who worked on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot investigation; Driscoll resisted that request.
The lawsuit also recounts an incident that the plaintiffs say contributed to Driscoll's removal. It says an FBI pilot, Chris Meyer, was falsely identified on social media as having been a case agent in the probe of classified documents at former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. The complaint says Patel told Driscoll that Meyer could no longer fly Patel on the FBI plane; Driscoll limited Meyer’s flying duties but refused to strip him entirely from duty or to fire him at the administration's insistence. According to the suit, Patel acknowledged firing Meyer and other agents because his ability to remain FBI director depended on removing personnel tied to cases involving the president. Meyer was later fired but is not a plaintiff in the case.
Jensen was tapped by Patel to run the FBI's Washington field office despite a backlash from some Trump allies over Jensen's prior role in coordinating investigations of the Capitol riot, the suit says. It alleges that Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Jensen they were expending "a lot of political capital" to keep him in that post. The complaint further alleges that Jensen was told in May to dismiss an agent assigned to his office who had worked on Trump-related matters and other investigations; that agent, Walter Giardina, is among the five who have said they were fired.
Evans, the third plaintiff, was a senior official in the FBI's Human Resources Division at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and oversaw reviews of accommodation requests related to vaccination requirements. The complaint says a former agent who repeatedly criticized Evans on social media and maintained access to Patel pressed for Evans's removal. Evans was among senior executives told in late January to either retire or be fired but was initially allowed to remain in his position and later led the Las Vegas field office. The suit says Evans was informed in May that he would have to leave and was notified on Aug. 6 that he had been fired — while he was preparing to move to an assignment in Huntsville, Alabama. The stated cause was "lack of reasonableness and overzealousness" in implementing COVID-19 protocols, a characterization the suit disputes.
The filings place the latest controversy in the broader context of a wave of departures that officials say has stripped the FBI of decades of institutional experience. Fired agents and their advocates have alleged that personnel decisions are increasingly shaped by political considerations rather than operational needs and public safety. Spokespeople for the FBI declined to comment on the lawsuit, as they did after the dismissals.
The case was lodged in the U.S. District Court in Washington, a venue where judges and grand juries have in recent years checked other Trump administration initiatives and charging decisions. The complaint's filing adds to a series of legal challenges and internal resentments that have marked relations between the bureau's career workforce and senior officials affiliated with the Trump administration.
The lawsuit seeks both immediate relief in the form of reinstatement and monetary damages as well as a public legal determination that the terminations were unlawful. It is likely to prompt further scrutiny of recent personnel moves at the FBI as litigation proceeds and may shape ongoing debates about the independence and politicization of the nation's principal federal law enforcement agency.