A former acting FBI director is accusing Director Kash Patel and other allies of President Donald Trump of orchestrating a politically motivated purge of the bureau’s leadership, seeking to punish officials who worked on Trump’s criminal investigations and submitting to White House pressure to gut the bureau’s workforce.
In a new lawsuit filed Wednesday, Brian Driscoll Jr. and two other fired FBI leaders who brought the legal case portray the early days of Trump’s second term as a chaotic crusade to punish the president’s adversaries — real and perceived — and root out anyone who evinced any support for Democrats.
Though Driscoll, Steven Jensen and Spencer Evans initially drew praise and plaudits from Trump administration leadership, their refusal to carry out political errands led Patel and others to publicly “smear” and oust them without warning, they allege, despite decades of unblemished service to the bureau. The three men are asking a federal court to find their firings to be illegal, reinstate them to their former positions and order a “name-clearing hearing” for each of them.
The 68-page lawsuit is an eye-popping indictment of the bureau by people who occupied some of its most senior and sensitive positions for years. The complaint claims Trump loyalists executed brazen political vendettas, lacked basic understanding of FBI management, were beholden to the whims of White House aides such as Stephen Miller and intentionally stoked fear among the workforce.
The lawsuit paints a particularly unflattering portrait of Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, as well as Emil Bove, a former top Justice Department leader who was confirmed in July to a lifetime judgeship on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the lawsuit, Driscoll alleges that Patel informed him that he intended to purge the FBI of any officials who worked on criminal cases connected to Trump. The lawsuit says Patel characterized the mass firing effort as a directive from the White House and Justice Department leadership, and that Patel suggested his own job as FBI director depended on carrying it out.
“Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President,” the lawsuit alleges. “Patel explained that 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.’”
The lawsuit also depicts Patel and Bongino as often wildly buffeted by the vagaries of opinions floated by Trump allies on social media. The FBI leaders often assured various FBI officials that their jobs were safe, only to abruptly fire them after Trump backers zeroed in on them online.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, names as defendants Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Executive Office of the President and the United States. Trump was not named as a defendant, nor was Bove or Bongino.
Driscoll and Jensen are represented in the lawsuit by a prominent lawyer opposing the administration in a series of cases, Abbe Lowell, along with Margaret Donovan, a former federal prosecutor who has represented the FBI Agents Association. Evans is represented by a well-known attorney for whistleblowers and on national-security matters, Mark Zaid, as well as labor and employment lawyer Heidi Burackiewicz.
Lowell also represents Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, fired Jan. 6 prosecutor Michael Gordon and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
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