The FBI fired more employees Thursday linked to investigations into President Trump after terminating at least 10 Wednesday, multiple sources confirmed. Overall, the rough estimate is about a dozen in total over two days.
The firings began after FBI Director Kash Patel alleged that former special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed his phone records as part of his investigation into Donald Trump, multiple sources said.
The agents, analysts and support staff, most of whom worked on Smith’s probe into President Trump’s retention of classified documents, were removed from their jobs over the past two days by Patel, who claimed that Smith had overstepped his authority by obtaining both his phone records as well as phone records for Mr. Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles while they were private citizens.
Patel had said in a statement to Reuters Wednesday that 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 describe the “flimsy pretexts.”
The types of phone records at the heart of his claim are known as toll records, which contain details such as the originating and recipient numbers, date, time, and duration of calls, but not the content. It is customary for law enforcement to obtain such records through a grand jury subpoena as part of a criminal investigation to 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 which were labeled “Top Secret.” Mr. Trump has said the documents were in his possession lawfully and claimed publicly that in the waning days of his presidency he declassified some material in his possession that had been classified.
Patel, who served in the first Trump administration, was designated by Mr. Trump at the time to be a representative to the National Archives and Records Administration, and he testified before a grand jury in the documents case in November 2022. In an interview with Breitbart News, Patel claimed to have been present when Mr. Trump declassified the material.
The FBI press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FBI Agents Association has condemned the firings, saying the employees were terminated without any due process.
Smith’s investigations into Mr. Trump led to the first federal criminal indictments against a former president in U.S. history. The classified document charges were dismissed by a federal judge in Florida in mid-2024 on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed, and Smith dropped the 2020 election charges after Mr. Trump won the 2024 race.
Since then, the Trump administration has taken aim at federal employees who worked on the two cases. The Justice Department fired a group of prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team, and the FBI has fired agents involved in the Arctic Frost election investigation.
