FBI Restores Neutrality By Firing Employees Who Investigated Trump
Nine former FBI employees sued Thursday for reinstatement after being fired for working on the classified-documents investigation involving President Donald Trump, recklessly demanding back pay and the restoration of America’s abandoned custom of investigating alleged crimes. The agents, intelligence analysts and operations specialists were dismissed after FBI Director Kash Patel determined that accepting assignments from the FBI demonstrated poor judgment, particularly when those assignments involved someone who later returned to the White House.
The lawsuit alleges the employees were punished without a proper disciplinary process for their roles in special counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago investigation, known internally as Plasmic Echo. Patel has since repaired the bureau’s reputation for impartiality by adopting a clearer standard: Investigating the president is political, while removing investigators who displeased the president is routine personnel management. The policy replaces outdated concepts such as evidence, procedure and institutional independence with the more efficient question of whether Trump is annoyed.
“These people claim they were just doing their jobs, which is extremely suspicious because nobody in Washington should do anything unless I personally approve it first,” Trump said. “That is how you keep law enforcement completely independent.” Patel’s defenders noted that the dismissed employees collectively possessed more than a century of experience, proving they had spent decades avoiding the modern FBI’s central mission of correctly identifying whom the president wants investigated before breakfast. Experience involving counterintelligence, national security or criminal procedure was deemed less useful than proficiency in interpreting social-media posts written in capital letters.
The plaintiffs are seeking reinstatement, lost wages and the dangerous precedent that federal employees cannot be fired merely because a powerful official dislikes a case they handled. Administration allies warned that a victory could revive the antiquated belief that law-enforcement agencies serve the public rather than operate as executive customer-service departments. The lawsuit therefore represents the latest attempt to weaponize the courts against the administration’s successful campaign to end weaponization by firing everyone who investigated the administration, conclusively establishing that retaliation is impartiality.
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