Fired FBI agents who worked on Trump 2020 election probe sue for wrongful termination
Washington — Two former FBI agents who helped examine President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcomes sued by the federal authorities on Thursday, alleging they had been wrongfully terminated just because they worked on the probe.
The lawsuit, filed in opposition to FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi and their respective businesses, is the newest in a rising variety of circumstances being filed by former agents who allege they had been fired for political causes with out due course of.
The lawsuit doesn’t identify the 2 former agents, every of whom worked on the 2020 election case that was recognized internally on the FBI as “Arctic Frost.” They are known as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 within the swimsuit.
The former agents are asking the court docket to seek out that their First and Fifth Amendment rights had been violated and to reinstate them to their earlier jobs.
The firings passed off within the fall of 2025, not lengthy after unredacted inner paperwork from the investigation had been launched publicly to Congress.
“FBI Director Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel summarily fired each Plaintiff. No internal investigation, notice, or hearing preceded their firings. Nor were Plaintiffs presented with any evidence purportedly supporting their firings or given an opportunity to appeal,” the previous agents allege within the lawsuit, which was filed within the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to remark.
In the lawsuit, the previous agents stated their firings run afoul of FBI coverage, which stipulates that agents can solely be eliminated for trigger, comparable to poor efficiency on the job, abuse of depart, misconduct, nationwide safety issues or an incapacity to carry out their duties.
One of the fired agents was requested to assist with the 2020 election probe, led by particular counsel Jack Smith, due to the necessity for monetary investigative experience. However, the work he finally carried out was “largely administrative and ministerial,” the lawsuit says.
“Despite his listing as a point of contact, John Doe 1 himself prepared very few Arctic Frost subpoena requests and performed only a minor role in the investigation,” it added.
The second former agent, John Doe 2, was additionally not a lead investigator for the case, and served in a “supporting role, handling tasks such as recording interviews when requested by lead agents or prosecutors, arranging for transcription services for recorded interviews, and keeping track of interview logs and records,” the lawsuit says.
John Doe 1 was knowledgeable of his firing on Halloween 2025, as he was about to go trick-or-treating together with his youngsters, the lawsuit says.
John Doe 2 was terminated a number of days later. At the time, he was working on “a high-profile fraud against the government investigation” and he had simply briefed each Patel and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on the case.
At the time, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro tried to intervene to avoid wasting the agent from being fired due to the vital work he was concerned with for her workplace, however the effort failed, in accordance with the lawsuit.
Since their terminations, each former agents have struggled to seek out new jobs, the swimsuit stated.
Elizabeth Tulis, a associate at Perry Law and an lawyer for the previous agents, stated that her shoppers “did exactly what they were trained to do: they accepted an assignment from their supervisors and carried it out professionally and apolitically.”
“The government fired them not because they did anything wrong, but solely because of their assignment to an investigation involving then-former President Trump, and a perception that the agents were therefore political non-supporters of President Trump,” Tulis stated. “The First Amendment forbids this kind of political retaliation.”
