Politics may have spurred August purge of 5 veteran FBI agents

When the FBI fired five veteran agents earlier this month, Director Kash Patel offered no explanation.

Shock at the firings has continued to reverberate through the storied agency. And now, details are emerging about the possible motivation, several sources close to the agents tell CBS News.

"There is a despicable purge underway of senior FBI officials, all of whom have risen in their careers as nonpartisan, and who have been targeted for vindictive, political purposes," said Mark Zaid, a whistleblower attorney who represents a number of federal workers dismissed under President Trump.

Without any public comment from FBI or Justice Department officials, the agents, including, Brian Driscoll, who served for a short time as acting director at the start of the Trump administration, and Steven Jensen, head of the powerful Washington field office, were summarily fired and given little explanation for their removal. None had reached retirement age, meaning the abrupt dismissals will deprive them of their full pensions. One agent's expulsion came a month after his wife died of cancer.

CBS News spoke with multiple sources close to the agents for this story. All of those interviewed spoke on the condition they not be identified for fear of retribution.

Some of the agents may have been targeted solely because they worked on one or more of the criminal investigations of Mr. Trump, while others who were ousted in an earlier spate of firings worked on the Biden administration's Jan. 6 investigations, sources close to the agents said. But the most senior agent, Driscoll, by outward appearances, was in good standing with Patel.

Driscoll, a highly decorated agent who took part in numerous daring counterterrorism operations, began his short stint as acting director with what many agents viewed as a singular act of bravery, resisting calls from a top Trump appointee at the Justice Department to turn over the names of FBI employees who had participated in the Jan. 6 investigation. Nevertheless, Patel kept Driscoll on after his Senate confirmation, putting him in a high-profile post as head of the bureau's Critical Incident Response Group, which oversees the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team and its aviation unit.

Jensen, a veteran agent who helped oversee the Jan. 6 investigation from his position as chief of the FBI's domestic terrorism section, was given a significant promotion by Patel to be the assistant director in charge of the Washington Field Office, one of the largest outposts in the country.

One source with knowledge of the matter told CBS News that Patel relied on both agents and particularly admired Driscoll, whom he viewed as a swashbuckling tactical operator. Another said that the FBI director opposed some of the firings. "I think Kash tried to save these people, honestly," the source said.

Yet there are also some indications that both men may have crossed FBI leadership over loyalty and personnel matters.

Zaid is part of a team of lawyers preparing to sue the federal government on behalf of some of the fired FBI agents. He told CBS News he suspects outside political interference.

"If you look at Patel's testimony from his confirmation hearing when he promised the committee there would be no politicization or retribution at the FBI under his leadership," Zaid told CBS News, "you have to conclude that he was either lying or, giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he was directed to take these actions, and that could only come from the White House or the Justice Department."

Patel promised senators during that hearing, "There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI, should I be confirmed as FBI director."

Democrats on Capitol Hill see the firings as baldly political and damaging to U.S. national security. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement to CBS News that he believes agents should be commended for their ability to enforce the law impartially.

"When we start purging agents for doing their jobs, instead of toeing a partisan line, we weaken our defense against everything from violent crime to foreign threats, and that makes us all less safe," Warner said.

When asked who ordered the termination of the agents, the FBI declined to comment. A White House official deferred to the FBI to discuss bureau personnel matters.

There are other factors that have led some sources close to the agents and lawyers representing them to question whether the abrupt removals were the result of outside political interference, possibly by the White House.

One question surrounds the role of a small band of right-leaning former agents who clashed with FBI leadership under directors James Comey and Christopher Wray and have been vocal critics of a bureau they believe was "weaponized" against them.

Among them is Kyle Seraphin, one of several former FBI agents and whistleblowers who were suspended or had their security clearances revoked for alleged misconduct during the Biden administration. The former agents, including Seraphin, have referred to themselves as "the suspendables." They have been targeting FBI officials they believe to be politically motivated.

Seraphin has been among the most outspoken – and effective – members of the group. He has at times been critical of Patel for not aggressively and swiftly cleaning house at the bureau, but he has also had Patel's ear. Sources say he exercises considerable influence from his social media perch on X and his podcast, "The Kyle Seraphin Show."

Seraphin has publicly claimed some of the credit for last week's purge. On August 4, he posted a thread on X under the heading "VETTING CRISIS CONTINUES," in which he identified one of the fired agents, Christopher M. Meyer. Meyer had been serving as one of the pilots of the governmental planes used by Patel until he was notified of his termination.

Seraphin had publicly speculated, correctly it turned out, that Meyer had previously been on a squad based in the Washington Field Office that investigated Mr. Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents and conducted a search of Mr. Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. The Justice Department brought criminal charges against Mr. Trump over the discovery of documents, but a judge eventually dismissed the case.

Seraphin told CBS News in an interview, "I identified that the person that ran the Mar-a-Lago case that resulted in a search warrant at the president's home was rubbing shoulders in close proximity with the FBI director" as his pilot. He was concerned that "this is a person that's now in the kind of buddy space of your FBI director, and he doesn't even know who he's speaking to."

On Alex Jones's "InfoWars" he said he gave a "heads up" to an "administration insider" about Meyer. He told CBS News his "Trump administration insider" was "in the president's orbit."

On that same day, Patel directed Driscoll to fire Meyer, sources told CBS News. When Driscoll asked on what grounds, he did not get what he considered a satisfactory answer from Patel, according to the source. Without itr, Driscoll refused. Two days later, on Aug. 6, Driscoll was contacted by J. William Rivers, the No. 3 official at the FBI, and told he was being terminated, the source said. He was given no reason why but later received a letter formally notifying him that he was being fired.

Around the same time, Jensen was also relieved of his duties. A source with knowledge of that matter said it was because he, too, refused to fire a subordinate agent in the Washington Field Office, though CBS News was not able to identify the person. Walter Giardina, a WFO agent who was also dismissed in the purge, had worked on a number of cases involving Mr. Trump and other members of his administration, including the prosecution of senior Trump aide Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress.

The fifth agent fired earlier this month was Spencer Evans, who had been the special agent in charge of the FBI's Nevada field office until earlier this summer, when he was abruptly told he was being transferred to Huntsville, Alabama. By then, Trump supporters, including Seraphin, had been publicly critical of him over his enforcement of FBI COVID policies during the tenure of former FBI Director Christpher Wray.

In April, Seraphin posted this on X:

"After @Kash_Patel was nominated, he asked me about people in the FBI who were problems. I said Spencer Evans, the SAC of Las Vegas, was the man who PERSONALLY denied the religious accommodations for Covid 19 shots and testing protocols."

Seraphin's post continued: "Kash said 'Gone.'"

Seraphin attached a video to his post that showed that months after that conversation, Evans was still leading the Las Vegas FBI office, and Patel was praising its work in tracking down criminals.

Then, last Wednesday, two hours before getting into his car to drive across the country for his new assignment, Evans received a call notifying him that he too was being terminated. He was given no reason.

Two days later Evans received a formal termination letter signed by Patel. It said Evans "demonstrated a lack of reasonableness and overzealousness in the implementation of COVID-19 protocols and policies."

After the August firings, Seraphin told CBS News a colleague in the FBI said to him, "You have four scalps hanging off your belt this week." Seraphin excluded Driscoll from the count, and referred to him as "collateral damage," and said he probably didn't deserve to be fired.

Graham Kates contributed to this report.