The FBI fired more employees on Thursday linked to investigations into President Donald Trump, following the termination of at least 10 agents on Wednesday, multiple sources confirmed. Overall, it is estimated that about a dozen employees were dismissed over the two-day period.
The firings began after FBI Director Kash Patel alleged that former special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed his phone records as part of Smith’s ongoing investigation into Donald Trump, according to multiple sources. The affected personnel—including agents, analysts, and support staff—mostly worked on Smith’s probe into President Trump’s retention of classified documents.
Patel claimed that Smith had overstepped his authority by obtaining his phone records, as well as phone records for Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, while both were private citizens. In a statement to Reuters on Wednesday, Patel said the FBI had secretly subpoenaed his phone records “using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight.” He did not elaborate on what those “flimsy pretexts” entailed.
The phone records at the center of this controversy are known as toll records. These include details such as originating and recipient phone numbers, call dates and times, and call durations, but do not contain the content of the conversations. It is customary for law enforcement agencies to obtain such records through a grand jury subpoena during criminal investigations, as they help reconstruct timelines, establish connections, and verify information.
During the Biden administration, after the National Archives had unsuccessfully sought the return of sensitive White House documents from Mr. Trump, the Justice Department seized White House files from Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. Some of these documents were labeled “Top Secret.” Mr. Trump has maintained that the documents were in his lawful possession and publicly claimed that he declassified some of the material during the closing days of his presidency.
Kash Patel, who served in the first Trump administration, was designated by Mr. Trump to be a representative to the National Archives and Records Administration. Patel also testified before a grand jury in the documents case in November 2022. In an interview with Breitbart News, he claimed to have been present when Mr. Trump declassified the material.
The FBI press office did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the recent firings. However, the FBI Agents Association condemned the terminations, stating that the employees were dismissed without any due process.
Jack Smith’s investigations into Mr. Trump marked the first federal criminal indictments against a former U.S. president in history. Notably, the classified document charges were dismissed by a federal judge in Florida in mid-2024 on grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed. Additionally, Smith dropped the 2020 election charges after Mr. Trump won the 2024 presidential race.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/about-a-dozen-fbi-staff-who-worked-on-trump-documents-case-fired-over-two-days-sources-say/