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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
FBI Director Kash Patel had to fire agents to keep his job, lawsuit
says
By Evan Perez, Holmes Lybrand, CNN
Updated:
3:28 PM EDT, Wed September 10, 2025
Source: CNN
Three former senior FBI officials summarily fired last month are ,
alleging that their terminations were part of a White House-directed
purge driven at least in part by social media bullying from MAGA
loyalists.
Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director for a month at the start
of the second Trump administration; Steven Jensen, who Patel installed
as assistant director in charge the Washington field office; and
Spencer Evans, who led the Las Vegas field office, allege that Patel
has politicized the FBI to protect his own job.
“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize
politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the
lawsuit states.
Their lawsuit – filed in Washington, DC, federal court on Wednesday
– seeks for their firings to be declared illegal and for their
reinstatement to their jobs with back pay.
The 68-page complaint provides, for the first time, first-hand accounts
from the top of the FBI of the tumultuous first few weeks of President
Donald Trump’s second term. Driscoll and other top officials resisted
efforts to try to fire or otherwise punish all FBI agents or employees
for simply having worked on criminal investigations of Trump, the
complaint says.
Patel told Driscoll in an early August conversation that his bosses,
“had directed him to fire anyone who they identified as having worked
on a criminal investigation against President Donald J. Trump,” the
complaint says.
Patel and other officials, during Senate confirmation hearings, had
dismissed any plans for political retribution, despite Trump’s
repeated threats during his campaign rallies to do exactly that.
“No one will be terminated for case assignments,” Patel said during
his confirmation hearing in late January.
In the early August conversation with Driscoll, Patel is cited as
saying, “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.’”
According to the lawsuit, Patel said that he needed to carry out
firings to keep his job.
Driscoll, Jensen and Evans were each fired in one-page emails from
Patel sent to subordinates who were told to deliver the termination
letters to their bosses, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint comes amid scores of other lawsuits and allegations of
politically motivated firings from the administration across federal
agencies, including the recent high-profile firing of CDC Director
Susan Monarez.
The FBI declined to comment.
Pressure from right-wing social media
The complaint portrays Patel and Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director,
as particularly concerned about their social media profiles, and the
reaction from influential Trump allies who frequently tag top White
House officials in their posts about the bureau. But some of those
social media accounts also trafficked in false claims that in end the
cost the men their jobs, according to the lawsuit.
Driscoll was fired after fighting to save the job of an FBI pilot and
military veteran who had become the subject of pro-Trump social media
scrutiny over claims that he had participated in Trump investigations
or the search of the president’s Mar-a-Lago home, the complaint says.
The agent had, in fact, not been involved in the Mar-a-Lago
investigation and wasn’t accused of misconduct, the complaint says.
The agent was fired the same day as Driscoll, according to the lawsuit.
Jensen was fired after Patel and Bongino came under attack by Trump
supporters on social media because of his involvement in investigating
January 6 cases, the complaint says. Evans’ termination came after a
former agent – who had been fired for refusing to follow Covid
requirements – began a social media campaign targeting Evans because
of his role in overseeing the FBI’s human resource division during
the pandemic era, the complaint says.
When he was first promoted to help lead the Washington Field Office,
Jensen was attacked online by former January 6 defendants and their
allies, the complaint says, and “began aggressively posting to Patel
and Bongino’s social media pages calling for Jensen’s firing,
arrest, and other retribution.”
Both Patel and Bongino lamented “that they were spending ‘a lot of
political capital’” to keep him in the position despite the
backlash online, with the director suggesting at one point that he was
placing positive stories in the media about Jensen and his new
position, the lawsuit says. Patel also wanted Jensen to sue some
prominent online personalities going after him because it would relieve
political pressure the FBI director was feeling.
For Evans, a similar story of social media backlash played out
according to the suit when a former agent claimed to have texted Patel
to fire Evans because of his position in human resources and the
Covid-testing policies in place at the FBI during the height of the
pandemic.
The former agent posted on social media an image of the alleged text
exchange with Patel where the soon-to-be director told the agent Evans
was “f**ked.”
Months later, after continued social media attacks from the former
agent, Evans was removed from his position as the Special Agent in
Charge of Las Vegas and, in the lead up to his firing, Evans was told
by one person that Patel had said “the personnel actions directed at
Evans were ‘all DOJ,’ and ‘politically driven,’ and that the
matter was out of Patel’s hands,’” the complaint says.
The lawsuit also provides Driscoll’s account of a well-publicized
showdown with Emil Bove, the acting attorney general at the time, over
demands for a list of FBI employees involved in Trump investigations.
Driscoll, whose appointment as acting FBI director came as a result of
a White House clerical error, initially resisted and narrowly avoided
being fired.
Bove – who also served as Trump’s defense attorney before his
re-election – has since been confirmed as a federal judge on the the
3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals.
After Patel was confirmed as director, Driscoll became leader of the
bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group, which among other
functions oversees the FBI’s special operations and its aviation
unit.
The lawsuit claims that Supervisory Special Agent Chris Meyer, a
veteran and FBI pilot was terminated following pressure from the White
House amid incorrect social media posts that said Meyer had been a
signatory of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, when he had, in fact, never
participated in the search of Trump’s Florida estate.
In August, Driscoll fought against Meyer’s firing, telling Patel it
would be illegal, the lawsuit says. During the conversation, Patel told
Driscoll “all FBI employees who they identified who had worked on the
cases against President Trump would be removed from their jobs,”
according to the complaint.
Patel told Driscoll that he needed to fire agents who worked on cases
against Trump in order to keep his own job, the complaint says, despite
whether the agents themselves chose to work on the cases or not.
Mark Zaid, attorney for the three fired agents said Patel’s
management of the bureau illustrates the hypocrisy of the
administration’s claim to be trying to root out weaponization in the
government.
“You talk about weaponization. You are the textbook definition of
weaponization,” he said.
“Kash Patel openly said he was not going to fire people for political
reasons or for them just doing their jobs,” Zaid said. “Either he
lied at his confirmation, or he is admitting he was being directed to
do this by [Attorney General Pam] Bondi and people at the White
House.”
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