E-Paper
Trump classified documents case: Why 9 former FBI employees are suing the bureau
Nine former FBI employees have sued the bureau, saying they were fired only because they worked on the Trump classified documents case.
Prefer HTon Google
Nine former FBI employees have sued the bureau, saying they were fired only because they worked on the investigation into President Donald Trump’s handling of classified records. The case is about the Mar-a-Lago documents probe led by former special counsel Jack Smith. Here's what we know.
What the lawsuit says
According to CBS News, the nine former employees include special agents, intelligence analysts and staff operations specialists who worked on counterintelligence investigations. They were fired over two days in February 2026, just as the United States and Israel were preparing to launch military strikes against Iran.
The lawsuit states: “Plaintiffs were unlawfully terminated not for any cause or any legitimate reason, but only to satisfy the President’s personal vendetta. 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.”
According to CBS News, the 70-page lawsuit was filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. It names the FBI, FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department as defendants.
According to The Hill, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of Jennifer Bacon, Zach Feldman, Gilbert Granados, Catherine Herrera, Harrison Kaufman, Jeremy Linton, Erin Matanic, Danielle Ray and Rachel Vaccaro.
All nine had worked on the classified documents investigation. They had also worked on other major cases, including the Boston Marathon bombing and the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
What is an ‘Article II’ firing?
As per The Hill, Article II is the part of the Constitution that sets up the presidency. The White House has fired many people while citing only the president’s authority.
The attorneys write: “An ‘Article II’ firing is an invention of the current Administration. Its invocation represents an attempt to convert all federal employees into political appointees and condition their continued employment on their (perceived) personal and political loyalty to President Trump. In reality, the ‘Article II’ rationale is nothing more than a pretext for firing like those of the Plaintiffs- that are politically retributive and unlawful.”
The suit uses public comments from top Justice Department officials and the president as proof of political motive. For example, Blanche, who was deputy attorney general when the employees were let go, said the administration had “cleaned house” at the FBI by firing employees linked to investigations involving the president.
Why were they fired? What the lawsuit says about Patel
According to CBS News, Jennifer Bacon, the head of the FBI’s counterintelligence section, learned she was being fired shortly after an agent named Miles Starr requested access to classified files related to the documents investigation, which was codenamed Plasmic Echo. The lawsuit says Starr was part of FBI Director Kash Patel’s Director’s Advisory Team.
The lawsuit says Starr emailed Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky on February 23, saying he urgently needed access to the files. It states: “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.”
Bacon and the other employees were fired less than 48 hours later. Eight were fired on the same day, while the ninth was fired the following day.
The suit also points to the timing of the firings. At that time, Patel was facing heavy criticism over videos showing him partying with the US men’s hockey team in Italy after their Winter Olympics win. The suit says: “This scandal proved politically perilous for Patel: he drew widespread criticism for his conduct, with numerous sources suggesting that his status with President Trump and position as Director of the FBI were in jeopardy as a result.”
And as per reports, on February 25, Patel gave an interview to Reuters on February 25. He said his phone records and those of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles had been subpoenaed as part of Jack Smith’s investigations.
According to The Hill, the lawsuit alleges that Patel broke a gag order in the Mar-a-Lago case by sharing this information and then fired the nine employees. The lawsuit states: “In the article, three unnamed FBI ‘sources’ linked the Plaintiffs’ terminations to the ‘revelations’ about the phone records subpoenas in the classified documents case.”
The documents case
FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, and in 2023 Jack Smith’s office charged Trump on more than three dozen counts. The federal judge dismissed the charges, saying Smith was unlawfully appointed, and the Justice Department later dropped its appeal after Trump won the 2024 election.
