FBI Director Kash Patel testifies during the Senate Judiciary hearing on Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

WASHINGTON - FBI employees fired for their roles in the investigation of President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents at his Florida estate sued on Thursday to get their jobs back, calling their terminations unlawful acts of  political retribution. 

The complaint adds to the growing list of legal challenges to the mass terminations under FBI Director Kash Patel of agents who participated in investigations of the Republican president or are seen as opposed to Trump administration interests.


The suit was filed in federal court in Washington on behalf of nine agents, intelligence analysts and staff operations specialists who were fired in February following earlier dismissals of agents who had worked on the investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Patel has said in congressional testimony that employees he has fired had  weaponized  the FBI. But the agents deny that claim in the lawsuit, noting that between them they had more than a century of distinguished and apolitical FBI service that involved responding to the Boston Marathon bombing, hostage recoveries and the investigation into the 2024 assassination attempt of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Their firings, the lawsuit says, create an  immeasurable loss  to  America's national security. 

 In return for their service, they were fired because they did their jobs, as they always did to follow the facts and law without bias or favor. To this administration, this is an offense. To the rest of us, it is heroic,  said a statement from their attorneys, Margaret Donovan, Abbe Lowell and Rebecca Tinio.

 This lawsuit will prove their unlawful dismissal and hold the administration accountable for this blatant attack on the rule of law,  the statement added.

The Mar-a-Lago investigation produced criminal charges against Trump

The suit lays out a detaile
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