Nine former FBI employees who worked on the classified-documents investigation into Donald Trump filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche, arguing the bureau fired them without cause and without the due process the law requires. The plaintiffs say they never asked to be part of the case that helped lead to Trump's 2023 indictment — they were simply assigned to it because of the specialized counterintelligence and intelligence squads they belonged to.
Who Is Suing and What They Want
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, names Jennifer Bacon, Zach Feldman, Gilbert Granados, Catherine Herrera, Harrison Kaufman, Jeremy Linton, Erin Matanic, Danielle Ray and Rachel Vaccaro as plaintiffs, according to NBC News. The suit seeks their reinstatement, back pay, and a court declaration that their terminations were unlawful. Together, the nine say they represent more than a century of combined FBI service.
Per the same report, the employees argue they did not volunteer to work the investigation, known internally as Plasmic Echo, but were pulled in because of their roles on counterintelligence and counterespionage squads. They say they were fired without cause and without any hearing, notice, or chance to appeal before losing their jobs — allegations that echo claims made in other recent suits against the bureau's leadership, as the Guardian has reported in related cases.
How the Case Against Trump Unfolded
The investigation traces back to a 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, which recovered classified records and eventually led to a federal indictment charging Trump with dozens of felony counts in June 2023, according to the News4JAX report republished from the Associated Press. Trump has denied wrongdoing. The case was later dismissed after Judge Aileen Cannon ruled in 2024 that special counsel Jack Smith had been improperly appointed by the Biden administration Justice Department, the NBC News account notes.
The employees' attorneys said their clients were fired simply for doing their jobs and following the facts and the law without bias, and that the lawsuit would prove the dismissals were unlawful and hold the administration accountable, per the News4JAX report. The suit also says the firings came after a senior Justice Department official demanded, within days of Trump's inauguration, that the FBI turn over a list of employees who had worked on Trump-related investigations — a demand then-acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll resisted before the bureau and Justice Department moved through waves of firings over the following year.
Patel's Own History With the Case
Before becoming FBI director, Kash Patel had publicly described the Mar-a-Lago search as unlawful and had called the agents who carried it out corrupt government gangsters, according to the News4JAX account. The lawsuit alleges the nine employees were terminated based on assumptions about their political beliefs, and that their work on the investigation was wrongly recast as politically motivated. It also says the FBI had subpoenaed Patel's own phone toll records as part of the broader investigation — records that show the date, time and length of calls but not their content.
A separate report from MS NOW describes the FBI firing at least 10 agents and support staff over allegations tied to phone records connected to Patel and Susie Wiles, though it is not established whether those employees are the same nine named in Thursday's lawsuit, and the two accounts should not be treated as describing identical figures.
A Bureau Reshaped by Turnover
The lawsuit lands amid broader reporting on strain inside the FBI's counterintelligence mission. NPR has reported that counterintelligence squads across many of the bureau's 56 field offices are staffed at only 50% to 60% of authorized positions, with the number of squads doing that work cut in half at multiple offices as agents and analysts are reassigned to violent crime, gang and immigration priorities. The bureau has lost more than 1,500 special agents since Trump returned to office, according to two people familiar with the matter cited by NPR, leaving it more than 650 agents below its January 2025 staffing level.
An FBI spokesperson denied to NPR that counterintelligence work was being weakened, calling the characterization false and saying the bureau maintains a robust counterintelligence operation across the enterprise. The bureau also said its counterintelligence task forces have expanded to more than 1,500 personnel when including partner agencies and state and local law enforcement.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Suits
Thursday's filing is not the first legal challenge from employees swept up in the post-2025 personnel changes. CNN reported that former senior officials Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen and Spencer Evans sued Patel and the Trump administration last year, seeking declarations that their firings were illegal along with reinstatement and back pay. Driscoll, fired by Patel in August 2025, is still pursuing his case, though the Justice Department has moved to dismiss it, according to a CNN follow-up report.
Separately, three former agents — Jamie Garman, Blaire Toleman and Michelle Ball — filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the FBI, the Justice Department, Patel and Pam Bondi, seeking to represent all employees fired since January 1, 2025, or those who might be terminated in the future based on perceived political affiliation without due process. Attorneys for that case estimated at least 50 former agents could ultimately be part of the class. The wave of litigation underscores how many current and former FBI employees are now contesting their firings in court, even as the outcomes of those earlier cases remain unresolved.
