Nine former FBI employees who worked Jack Smith’s Trump documents probe sued the bureau Thursday, alleging unlawful firings the administration has described as cleaning house.
The 70-page complaint landed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and names the FBI, Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the Justice Department as defendants. The plaintiffs are former special agents, intelligence analysts, and staff operations specialists. They say they lost their jobs over two days in February 2026 after working the classified-records investigation that once targeted President Trump.
CBS News reported the filing and the core claim inside it: the nine were removed not for misconduct, but because of their roles on the Smith case. Blanche has said the administration “cleaned house” at the FBI by removing employees tied to investigations involving the president.
The lawsuit argues the terminations ignored the bureau’s usual rules. It says there was no internal investigation, no disciplinary process, no notice, no hearing, and no chance to appeal.
Patel, the complaint states, claimed authority under Article II of the Constitution and nothing more.
“The firings did not follow any internal investigation or disciplinary process within the FBI, and Plaintiffs were not given any notice, a hearing, or an opportunity to appeal. Instead, Patel claimed to rely solely upon 'Article II' to support the firings,”
That is the plaintiffs’ account of how they were removed. The government response to the suit was not detailed in the initial reporting.
One named plaintiff, Jennifer Bacon, had been a counterintelligence section chief. Another, Zach Feldman, was a former special agent. Feldman was told of his termination by a special agent in charge. The suit says that official guessed the move might track news that day about Patel’s conduct at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
The complaint walks through a tight sequence in late February 2026.
On Feb. 23, agent Miles Starr emailed Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky. Starr sits on Patel’s Director’s Advisory Team and had been the lead case agent who testified in the since-dismissed indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. Starr said he needed urgent access to the “Plasmic Echo” case files on instructions from Patel.
“Starr did not explain what he needed, but stated that he was on instructions from Patel to access the case file. Bacon granted him access to all Plasmic Echo files in the FBI's case management system, with the exception of one specific subfile. The files Starr had access to contained the names of all nine Plaintiffs,”
Less than 48 hours later, Bacon and the others were out. Eight of the nine were fired on Feb. 25. The ninth went the next day.
Feb. 25 was also the day Patel sat for a Reuters interview and disclosed that phone records belonging to him and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles had been subpoenaed during Smith’s probes. The suit treats the timing as part of its political-animus theory. It does not prove the motive. It alleges it.
The underlying investigation is not a live criminal case. It is history with a paper trail.
In August 2022, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago and recovered more than 100 documents bearing classified markings, according to the prior public record recounted in the coverage. In 2023, Smith’s office indicted Trump on more than three dozen charges tied to alleged retention of records and obstruction.
A federal judge later dismissed the charges, ruling that Smith had been unlawfully appointed special counsel. After Trump won the 2024 election, the Justice Department formally abandoned its appeal of that ruling. The special counsel project ended. The personnel fights did not.
The new lawsuit still frames the February firings as payback. It alleges the nine “were unlawfully terminated not for any cause or any legitimate reason, but only to satisfy the President's personal vendetta.” That is the plaintiffs’ charge, not a court finding.
“were unlawfully terminated not for any cause or any legitimate reason, but only to satisfy the President's personal vendetta,”
The complaint also floats a second theory: that the firings helped divert attention from negative coverage of Patel after he was spotted at the Olympic Games in Milan on Feb. 22. The suit’s own language describes beer-chugging and alcohol flung in a U.S. men’s hockey locker room and calls the episode “politically perilous.” Those characterizations belong to the filing. They are not independent findings in the initial report.
Military strikes against Iran began on Feb. 28, days after the last of the nine were removed. The complaint notes the calendar. It does not establish a legal link.
Attorneys Margaret Donovan, Abbe Lowell, and Rebecca Tinio issued a joint statement casting their clients as long-serving professionals who followed facts and law.
“With over a century of experience among them, these former FBI agents and analysts served our country with honor and distinction as they investigated leaks of national security and defense information, thwarted threats and attacks from our enemies, and responded to critical incidents like the Boston Marathon bombing,”
“In return for their service, they were fired because they did their jobs, as they always did, to follow the facts and the law without bias or favor.”
That is the defense of the nine. Blanche’s public line has been different: the administration cleaned house of employees associated with investigations involving the president. Two stories. One set of pink slips. A federal judge in Washington will eventually sort the legal claims.
What the suit does not erase is the record of the documents case itself. A special counsel appointment was thrown out. An indictment died. The Justice Department dropped the appeal after the voters returned Trump to office. New leadership then removed personnel tied to that work. The plaintiffs call it a vendetta. The attorney general called it housecleaning.
Process still matters. So does the chain of command at a bureau that spent years inside a case a court said should never have been brought that way. The complaint will test notice, hearings, and Article II. It will not revive Jack Smith’s indictment.
Career agents can sue for process. They do not get to lock the FBI into the staffing chart of a special counsel project that already failed in court.
