FBI agents fired over Trump investigation get broad backing in lawsuit
against administration
[August 05, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — An association of thousands of FBI agents and other
groups are backing a lawsuit filed by three bureau employees who were
fired last year for their roles in an investigation into President
Donald Trump's efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential
election.
A legal brief by the FBI Agents Association is one of five filed by
outside parties in the last week in support of the agents, who were
terminated as part of a broader personnel purge by FBI Director Kash
Patel that has targeted employees who investigated Trump or are
perceived as being against the administration's interest.
Taken together, the filings, including from former FBI and Justice
Department alumni, underscore a concerted and bipartisan pushback to the
waves of terminations that have roiled the FBI in the last year and a
half as Patel has sought to remake the bureau in his own image.
The briefs argue that the firings were illegal because the agents were
denied due process and punished for perceived political affiliation, and
say the terminations contradict decades of expectations that the
bureau's “apolitical, professional career corps of agents” can work on
sensitive cases without putting their careers at risk.
“The Bureau simply cannot function if individual Special Agents must
choose whether to accept a lawful assignment that could later get them
fired, or alternatively to reject it and become subject to firing for
insubordination. FBI Special Agents have long understood that they are
subject to assignment and reassignment at any time based on the needs of
the Bureau,” the agents association, which serves nearly 12,000 members,
wrote in its brief.
A brief filed by former senior Justice Department officials says the
firings have undermined a “half-century of independence as a guiding
principle.”
“Putting aside the resulting violation of Plaintiffs' rights, the
inevitable impact of this ‘purge’ will be to chill the independence of
remaining and future career agents, attorneys, analysts, and other staff
at the FBI, DOJ and other law enforcement agencies who must now act with
the understanding that their investigative and law enforcement judgments
can, for the first time in their careers, be assessed through a partisan
political lens,” the brief states.
[to top of second column]
|
An FBI seal is displayed on a podium before a news conference at the
field office in Portland, Ore., Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane,
File)
The three agents — Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman and Blaire Toleman —
said in a federal lawsuit filed in March that they were fired in a
“retribution campaign” targeting them for their work on the
investigation into Trump. The agents performed “exemplary and
unblemished” service in the FBI and expected to spend the remainder
of their careers at the bureau but were abruptly fired without cause
and without being given a chance to respond, the lawsuit says.
The investigation the agents worked on culminated in an indictment
from special counsel Jack Smith that accused Trump of scheming to
overturn the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Smith ultimately abandoned that case, along with a separate one
accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified records at his
Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after Trump won back the
White House in 2024, citing Justice Department legal opinions that
prohibit the federal indictments of sitting presidents.
Patel and Pam Bondi, who was the attorney general at the time, have
said the fired agents and prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team
were responsible for weaponizing federal law enforcement, a claim
that was also asserted in their termination letters but that the
plaintiffs call defamatory and baseless.
The filings are known in the law as amici, or friend-of-the-court,
briefs. They are sometimes submitted by outside parties in lawsuits
to help stress particular arguments or inform a judge's thinking.
Other groups who submitted briefs include a collection of First
Amendment Scholars, a group called Lawyers for the Rule of Law, and
Justice Connection, a network of department alumni that warned in
its filing that a “politicized” FBI could turn against citizens
because of their speech, association or perceived disloyalty.
“The Constitution,” the filing said, “is designed to prevent
precisely this kind of abuse.”
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
