By Evan Perez, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — Three former senior FBI officials summarily fired last month are suing FBI Director Kash Patel and the Trump administration, alleging that their terminations were part of a White House-directed purge driven at least in part by social media bullying from MAGA loyalists.

Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director for a month at the start of the second Trump administration; Steven Jensen, who Patel installed as assistant director in charge the Washington field office; and Spencer Evans, who led the Las Vegas field office, allege that Patel has politicized the FBI to protect his own job.

“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the lawsuit states.

Their lawsuit – filed in Washington, DC, federal court on Wednesday – seeks for their firings to be declared illegal and for their reinstatement to their jobs with back pay.

The 68-page complaint provides, for the first time, first-hand accounts from the top of the FBI of the tumultuous first few weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term. Driscoll and other top officials resisted efforts to try to fire or otherwise punish all FBI agents or employees for simply having worked on criminal investigations of Trump, the complaint says.

Patel told Driscoll in an early August conversation that his bosses, “had directed him to fire anyone who they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against President Donald J. Trump,” the complaint says.

Patel and other officials, during Senate confirmation hearings, had dismissed any plans for political retribution, despite Trump’s repeated threats during his campaign rallies to do exactly that.

“No one will be terminated for case assignments,” Patel said during his confirmation hearing in late January.

In the early August conversation with Driscoll, Patel is cited as saying, “there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.’”

According to the lawsuit, Patel said that he needed to carry out firings to keep his job.

Driscoll, Jensen and Evans were each fired in one-page emails from Patel sent to subordinates who were told to deliver the termination letters to their bosses, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint comes amid scores of other lawsuits and allegations of politically motivated firings from the administration across federal agencies, including the recent high-profile firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez.

The FBI declined to comment.

Pressure from right-wing social media

The complaint portrays Patel and Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director, as particularly concerned about their social media profiles, and the reaction from influential Trump allies who frequently tag top White House officials in their posts about the bureau. But some of those social media accounts also trafficked in false claims that in end the cost the men their jobs, according to the lawsuit.

Driscoll was fired after fighting to save the job of an FBI pilot and military veteran who had become the subject of pro-Trump social media scrutiny over claims that he had participated in Trump investigations or the search of the president’s Mar-a-Lago home, the complaint says.

The agent had, in fact, not been involved in the Mar-a-Lago investigation and wasn’t accused of misconduct, the complaint says. The agent was fired the same day as Driscoll, according to the lawsuit.

Jensen was fired after Patel and Bongino came under attack by Trump supporters on social media because of his involvement in investigating January 6 cases, the complaint says. Evans’ termination came after a former agent – who had been fired for refusing to follow Covid requirements – began a social media campaign targeting Evans because of his role in overseeing the FBI’s human resource division during the pandemic era, the complaint says.

When he was first promoted to help lead the Washington Field Office, Jensen was attacked online by former January 6 defendants and their allies, the complaint says, and “began aggressively posting to Patel and Bongino’s social media pages calling for Jensen’s firing, arrest, and other retribution.”

Both Patel and Bongino lamented “that they were spending ‘a lot of political capital’” to keep him in the position despite the backlash online, with the director suggesting at one point that he was placing positive stories in the media about Jensen and his new position, the lawsuit says. Patel also wanted Jensen to sue some prominent online personalities going after him because it would relieve political pressure the FBI director was feeling.

For Evans, a similar story of social media backlash played out according to the suit when a former agent claimed to have texted Patel to fire Evans because of his position in human resources and the Covid-testing policies in place at the FBI during the height of the pandemic.

The former agent posted on social media an image of the alleged text exchange with Patel where the soon-to-be director told the agent Evans was “f**ked.”

Months later, after continued social media attacks from the former agent, Evans was removed from his position as the Special Agent in Charge of Las Vegas and, in the lead up to his firing, Evans was told by one person that Patel had said “the personnel actions directed at Evans were ‘all DOJ,’ and ‘politically driven,’ and that the matter was out of Patel’s hands,’” the complaint says.

The lawsuit also provides Driscoll’s account of a well-publicized showdown with Emil Bove, the acting attorney general at the time, over demands for a list of FBI employees involved in Trump investigations. Driscoll, whose appointment as acting FBI director came as a result of a White House clerical error, initially resisted and narrowly avoided being fired.

Bove – who also served as Trump’s defense attorney before his re-election – has since been confirmed as a federal judge on the the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals.

After Patel was confirmed as director, Driscoll became leader of the bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group, which among other functions oversees the FBI’s special operations and its aviation unit.

The lawsuit claims that Supervisory Special Agent Chris Meyer, a veteran and FBI pilot was terminated following pressure from the White House amid incorrect social media posts that said Meyer had been a signatory of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, when he had, in fact, never participated in the search of Trump’s Florida estate.

In August, Driscoll fought against Meyer’s firing, telling Patel it would be illegal, the lawsuit says. During the conversation, Patel told Driscoll “all FBI employees who they identified who had worked on the cases against President Trump would be removed from their jobs,” according to the complaint.

Patel told Driscoll that he needed to fire agents who worked on cases against Trump in order to keep his own job, the complaint says, despite whether the agents themselves chose to work on the cases or not.

Mark Zaid, attorney for the three fired agents said Patel’s management of the bureau illustrates the hypocrisy of the administration’s claim to be trying to root out weaponization in the government.

“You talk about weaponization. You are the textbook definition of weaponization,” he said.

“Kash Patel openly said he was not going to fire people for political reasons or for them just doing their jobs,” Zaid said. “Either he lied at his confirmation, or he is admitting he was being directed to do this by [Attorney General Pam] Bondi and people at the White House.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.