Trump White House Exerts Enormous Influence Over FBI, Lawsuit Says

The White House has exerted extraordinary influence over decisions at the F.B.I., issuing political loyalty tests and directly ordering the firings of agents targeted by President Trump and his allies, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday by three former bureau officials who accused the administration of illegally dismissing them.

The sprawling suit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, provides a disturbing account of what it describes as efforts by Mr. Trump’s top aides to strip the bureau of its century-long history of independence. It paints an unflattering portrait of the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, as a middleman executing the orders of top Justice Department and White House officials, including Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s chief domestic policy adviser.

The former officials who brought the suit — Brian J. Driscoll Jr., Steven J. Jensen and Spencer L. Evans — once occupied senior positions in the F.B.I. They accused Mr. Patel of dismissing them as part of “a campaign of retribution” for their “failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty.”

“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the F.B.I. over protecting the American people,” the lawsuit said.

Over 68 pages, the suit describes previously unreported accounts about key Trump appointees, including Mr. Patel, Mr. Miller and Emil Bove III, a former senior Justice Department official recently named to serve as a federal appeals court judge. The New York Times was not able to independently verify some of the accounts, though they add new detail to the firings and ousters across the agency.

The lawsuit describes Mr. Patel and his top deputy, Dan Bongino — right-wing influencers with far less experience than any of their predecessors — as almost cartoonish figures more interested in social media or handing out oversized “challenge coins” than in running the day-to-day operations of the nation’s flagship law enforcement agency.

The three former officials repeatedly accuse Mr. Patel of what, in their view, is a cardinal sin of bureau leadership: refusing to stand up for career field agents who make the bureau run.

Mr. Patel, who as a podcaster and Trump campaign surrogate denounced the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the bureau, has been an enthusiastic public supporter of the F.B.I.’s work on a range of investigations since taking over its leadership. He has said any personnel changes have been to reform the bureau.

Still, the lawsuit accuses Mr. Miller and Mr. Bove — who effectively led the Justice Department in the first months of the administration — of running roughshod over institutional independence by ordering the dismissals of longtime agents for no reason other than a “lack of confidence that they would carry out the president’s agenda.”

At the center of this effort, according to the suit, was Mr. Miller, whose influence has at times exceeded the power exercised by the Senate-confirmed officials nominally in charge of the Justice Department and the F.B.I.

“Bove stated that he was receiving pressure from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to see ‘symmetrical action at the F.B.I. as had been happening at D.O.J.,’” the lawsuit said. “Bove made clear that he and Miller wanted to see personnel action like reassignment, removals and terminations at the F.B.I.”

Their experiences added to the already troubling picture of the war that Mr. Trump has carried out against those inside government who are perceived to have opposed his administration and its agenda. Waves of retributive firings and demotions have taken place inside federal agencies, including the Health and Human Services Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve.

The F.B.I. has been the target of some of the most severe attacks because of Mr. Trump’s belief that the bureau wrongly investigated him for an array of purported malfeasance. Mr. Trump has never forgiven the agency for examining the connections between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign or for helping the special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute him for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents after he left office.

In a series of cinematic vignettes, the lawsuit asserted the F.B.I. had become thoroughly politicized under the leadership of Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino.

Mr. Driscoll, who ran the bureau for several weeks before Mr. Patel arrived, described how during his initial “vetting” interview with Mr. Patel, he was informed that he could have a top position if he was “not prolific on social media, did not donate to the Democratic Party and did not vote for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.”

Mr. Driscoll then had a second interview with Paul Ingrassia, who briefly had the ill-defined job of “White House-D.O.J. transition liaison.”

During that interview, the lawsuit said, Mr. Ingrassia asked several questions that Mr. Driscoll believed were inappropriate, including whether he supported Mr. Trump and what he thought about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Then came a bizarre incident that illustrated the administration’s focus on political appearances over the bureau’s independence and functionality.

Mr. Driscoll had, in fact, been applying for the No. 2 job at the F.B.I. and was told that another senior agent, Robert Kissane, would serve as acting director.

But someone in the White House committed a “clerical error,” the lawsuit said, and officials issued a public statement reversing their titles, announcing Mr. Driscoll for the top job.

Trump aides were “unwilling to fix” the foul-up, Mr. Bove told Mr. Driscoll, even if it meant that one of the most powerful posts in government went to the wrong man, the lawsuit said.

Mr. Driscoll said he told Mr. Bove he would take the job on the condition that he would not be called upon to fire employees without due process.

Yet almost at once, the lawsuit said, Mr. Bove, Mr. Trump’s former defense lawyer, began pressuring both Mr. Driscoll and Mr. Kissane to fire agents in key positions across the country and pushed back when they questioned whether there was “a lawful basis” for the requested dismissals.

“Bove again brought up the pressure he was receiving from Miller to conduct summary firings of agents as had been done with respect to D.O.J. attorneys,” the lawsuit said.

Mr. Driscoll and Mr. Kissane said they sought to fend off one of Mr. Bove’s most insistent demands, that they create a detailed list of agents who had worked on the vast investigation into the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the broader sense, the two men also sought to “provide stability for ongoing F.B.I. operations,” the lawsuit said — to counter the attacks on the bureau by the president’s political appointees.

In fact, Mr. Bove had admitted to them that one of the administration’s main goals was “stoking panic and anxiety within federal law enforcement and other federal agencies,” according to the lawsuit.

Ultimately, their efforts to protect the bureau and its employees created “a groundswell of support within the F.B.I. for Driscoll’s and Kissane’s leadership,” the lawsuit said. As part of that show of support, agents quietly started to circulate videos based on the “Batman” movie franchise depicting Mr. Driscoll as a hero and Mr. Bove as a villain. That irritated Mr. Bove, the lawsuit said.

“Bove told Driscoll that he was angry that, in parody videos apparently created by F.B.I. employees, Bove was portrayed as the Batman villain Bane, while Driscoll was portrayed as Batman,” the suit said.

Mr. Jensen, who was chosen by Mr. Patel to run the F.B.I.’s field office in Washington, had his own complaints about the bureau’s leaders.

The lawsuit said that he became alarmed at one point by the “intense focus” that Mr. Bongino was devoting to “increasing online engagement through his social media profiles in an effort to change his followers’ perception of the F.B.I.” Mr. Jensen worried that Mr. Bongino was spending more time on “creating content for his social media pages” than on actual F.B.I. investigations.

Early in his tenure, Trump supporters attacked Mr. Jensen outside the F.B.I. for his previous role in overseeing the domestic terrorism operations section, a role that deeply involved him in the investigation into Jan. 6.

Mr. Patel initially stood by him and suggested that he sue some of his critics. But Mr. Patel then fired Mr. Jensen in a letter last month that claimed he had “failed to execute and perform requested tasks, resulting in an unreasonable delay in the execution of F.B.I. priorities.”

Mr. Evans, who served as the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Las Vegas office, drew the ire of bureau leaders after a former agent, Kyle Seraphin, posted on social media about how he had once denied religious exemptions to subordinates who wanted to avoid the Covid-19 vaccine. Those accusations were in fact included in the letter ordering his dismissal.

The order to get rid of Mr. Giardina and Chris Meyer, another agent who until recently served as Mr. Patel’s pilot, was also driven by far-right criticism and misinformation on social media that had been forwarded to top White House aides, including Mr. Miller, the lawsuit said.

In the filing, the former officials suggest Mr. Giardina and Mr. Meyer were everything that Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino were not: decorated combat veterans with decades of investigative experience, abiding respect for the institution and a disdain for self-promotion.

In early July, Mr. Jensen met with Mr. Patel to urge him to protect Mr. Giardina, whom he believed to be unfairly targeted. He suggested it would be “inexcusably cruel” to add to the burden of a man who was caring for his dying wife, according to the lawsuit.

Mr. Patel handed him a challenge coin, passed out three cigars, told him he was “crushing it” and ushered him out of the office.

He fired Mr. Giardina about a month later.

Adam Goldman contributed reporting.