Three fired FBI agents sued on Tuesday to try to get their jobs back, saying in a class action lawsuit that they were illegally punished for their participation in an investigation into President Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The federal lawsuit adds to the mounting list of court challenges to a personnel purge by FBI Director Kash Patel that, over the last year, has ousted dozens of agents, either because of their involvement in investigations related to Mr. Trump or because they were perceived as insufficiently loyal to the president’s agenda.
The lawsuit in federal court in Washington was technically filed on behalf of just three agents but may have much broader implications, given that its request for class action status could open the door for agents fired since the start of the Trump administration to get their jobs back.
The three agents — Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman and Blaire Toleman — were fired last October and November in what they say was a “retribution campaign” targeting them for their work investigating Mr. Trump. The agents had between eight and 14 years of “exemplary and unblemished” service in the FBI and expected to spend the remainder of their careers at the bureau but were abruptly fired without cause and without being given a chance to respond, the lawsuit says.
“Serving the American people as FBI agents was the highest honor of our lives,” they said in a statement. “We took an oath to uphold the Constitution, followed the facts wherever they led and never compromised our integrity. Our removal from federal service — without due process and based on a false perception of political bias — is a profound injustice that raises serious concerns about political interference in federal law enforcement.”
The investigation the agents worked on culminated in a 2023 indictment from special counsel Jack Smith that accused Mr. Trump of illegally scheming to undo the results of the presidential election he lost to Democrat Joseph R. Biden in 2020. Mr. Smith ultimately abandoned that case, along with a separate one accusing Mr. Trump of illegally retaining classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after Mr. Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing Justice Department legal opinions that prohibit the federal indictments of sitting presidents.
The lawsuit notes that the firings followed the release by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of documents about the election investigation — known as Arctic Frost — that he said had come from within the FBI. Those records included files showing that Mr. Smith’s team had subpoenaed several days of phone records of some Republican lawmakers.
The complaint names as defendants Mr. Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing them of having orchestrated the firings despite being “personally embroiled” either as witnesses or attorneys in some of the legal actions against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Patel, for instance, was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and had his phone records subpoenaed, while Ms. Bondi was part of the legal team that represented Mr. Trump at his first impeachment trial, which resulted in his acquittal.
“And now, by virtue of presidential appointment to the pinnacle of federal law enforcement, Defendants are abusing their positions to claim victories that eluded them on the merits,” the lawsuit states.
Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Mr. Patel and Ms. Bondi have said the fired agents and prosecutors who worked on Mr. Smith’s team were responsible for weaponizing federal law enforcement, a claim that was also asserted in their termination letters but that the plaintiffs call defamatory and baseless.
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