Yesterday, three former high-ranking FBI officials sued the agency’s director Kash Patel for wrongful termination and retaliation. Brian Driscoll, Jr., Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans allege a revenge campaign by the White House against Trump’s enemies at the FBI hat violated due process and the First Amendment and ultimately led to their dismissal. Their complaint describes shocking corruption of what is supposed to be an apolitical law enforcement agency.
It’s also freakin’ hilarious.
Kash Patel, serial litigant and the illustrious recipient of an “order on ineptitude” from a federal judge, is an incompetent hack? Say it ain’t so!
The story begins the week before Trump’s second inauguration. Patel called Driscoll, a decorated agent known to his pals as “Drizz,” who was then leading the FBI’s Newark Field Office and asked him to come to DC to work at FBI headquarters. The job would require “vetting” by the White House, but Patel assured Driscoll that he’d be fine as long as 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.”
He was not fine.
On January 17, the Trump transition team dispatched Paul Ingrassia, a rightwing blogger who represented accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate in 2023, despite not being admitted to the bar until 2024. Ingrassia’s nomination as Special Counsel stalled in July after his long, public association with Nazis was brought to the attention of the Senate. But back in January he was riding high as White House liaison to the DOJ, demanding to know: who Driscoll voted for; if he agreed that the agents who “stormed” Mar-a-Lago to retrieve all the classified docs Trump was storing in the toilet should be fired; his thoughts on DEI; when he started supporting Trump; and whether he’d voted for a Democrat in the last five elections.
Later that night, Trump’s personal lawyer Emil Bove called to say that Driscoll got a thumbs down because Ingrassia said he was not “based out” enough. (OMG, these dorks!) Not to worry, though, because Bove overrode Ingrassia and told Team Trump that Driscoll was BASED AS HELL, BRO. Bove persuaded Driscoll to come to DC and serve as interim deputy director, with his longtime colleague Robert Kissane as the acting agency head. But when they showed up, the paperwork said that Kissane was in the number two spot.
According to the complaint, “Bove told Kissane that it was a clerical error but that the White House was unwilling to fix it.” And that’s how Driscoll became acting director of the FBI!
Driscoll and Kissane spent the next three weeks fending off Bove, who was by then Deputy Assistant AG. Bove was under pressure from the White House to fire anyone involved in the January 6 cases, and he demanded a list of everyone at the FBI who was involved in the investigations. Driscoll countered that this would include thousands of agents, including himself. He also pointed out that they enjoyed civil service protections that meant they couldn't be summarily dismissed. But Bove insisted that he had the unilateral power to remove anyone if he felt a “loss of confidence in their ability to carry out the President’s agenda,” and so he fired dozens of experienced agents.
Unsurprisingly, this purge failed to endear him to the rank and file, prompting a massive tantrum from the future federal judge:
Bove’s efforts did, however, create a groundswell of support within the FBI for Driscoll’s and Kissane’s leadership. Rank-and-file agents appeared to appreciate that the two men were the reasons the country had not been catapulted into a national security emergency brought on by suspected mass firings at the FBI. Bove told Driscoll that he was angry that, in parody videos apparently created by FBI employees, Bove was portrayed as the Batman villain “Bane,” while Driscoll was portrayed as “Batman.” Driscoll responded that he did not make the video, nor could he control unknown individuals’ feelings or expressions of said feelings.
Bove responded that Driscoll could have told the FBI’s workforce that Driscoll trusted him. Bove then stated that he and now-confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi were going to have an in-person meeting with Patel later that afternoon to discuss “what they were going to do with Kissane and Driscoll.”
Things did not get better when Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino showed up. Both men left government service to become MAGA influencers, with Patel hawking everything from drug supplements to his own brand of wine. In office, he focused on swag, including a “challenge coin” branded with his signature “Ka$h” logo. For his part, Bongino continued his fixation with the conspiracy theories that filled his podcast. Plaintiff Steven Jensen, whom they recruited from South Carolina to be Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office, “regularly updated Bongino on investigations that Bongino considered priorities, including into the January 6 pipe bomber, the leak of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, and the discovery of cocaine at the White House during the Biden Administration, which were three cases that Bongino frequently discussed in media interviews and on his social media feed.”
Patel and Bongino were obsessed with social media, urging their subordinates to post constantly, to the extent that Jensen worried “it could risk outweighing more deliberate analyses of investigations.” And in the end, it was rightwing social media posters who got Jensen and Evans fired. Jensen was axed for his participation in the January 6 investigations, and Evans was forced out because of MAGA outrage over his enforcement of COVID protocols in 2021.
Before firing Jensen, Patel suggested that he sue some of his online critics: “Doing so, Patel explained, would help take the political pressure off of him for his decision to promote Jensen.” This is extremely on brand for Patel, who filed many, many trollsuits, including against the New York Times, CNN, Politico, the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and former FBI Director Chris Wray. None of these came to anything, although Patel did manage to get a default judgment against a podcaster who failed to show up in court.
Patel is currently suing MSNBC commentator Frank Figliuzzi for suggesting that he spends more time partying than working. And Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, is suing Kyle Seraphin, a rightwing podcaster and self-styled FBI whistleblower, who called her “a former Mossad agent” and expressed doubt that she is genuinely into “a cross-eyed, you know, kind of thickish built, super cool bro who’s almost 50 years old who’s Indian in America.” It’s probably not a coincidence that the Driscoll complaint cites a tweet by Seraphin with screenshotted texts from Patel promising to fire Evans.
Jensen rebuffed his boss’s suggestions to sue. But it appears to have occurred to Patel that he was likely to wind up on the pointy end of at least one lawsuit. Driscoll says that he told Patel multiple times that illegally terminating various FBI employees without regard for process would result in litigation against the FBI.
Over and over again the complaint alleges that “Patel said that he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed.” And now he might!
Each of the plaintiffs received a one-page letter purporting to terminate them for cause. But according to the complaint, Patel and Bongino couldn’t even manage to do that correctly:
As of the date of this filing, Driscoll has not been provided with an SF-50. The SF50 is a government form titled “Notification of Personnel Action” which is provided to former employees upon termination. The “Nature of Action” on an SF-50 would typically signify the removal of an employee and is completed by the employer. That section has a corresponding section, “Legal Authority” which is also intended to be completed by the employer. As of the date of this filing, individuals within FBI’s HRD are reportedly unsure what to enter under “Legal Authority” and have thus not yet completed the form or issued it to Driscoll.
Driscoll, Jensen, and Evans sued Patel, AG Bondi, and the FBI alleging that they were retaliated against for their perceived political affiliation in violation of the First Amendment and that their terminations without due process violated the Fifth Amendment. They demand reinstatement with backpay, plus a declaratory judgment that their termination was illegal. A phalanx of heavy hitters signed the complaint, including: Chris Mattei, who represented the Sandy Hook parents against Alex Jones; Mark Zaid and Brad Moss, who’ve represented everyone from Alexander Vindman to Mickey Dolenz; and the ubiquitous Abbe Lowell.
Meanwhile, Patel announced that the FBI arrested the shooter in the Charlie Kirk case, only to have to walk it back.
Good thing they got rid of Driscoll, Jensen, Evans, with their collective 70 years of experience, along with superstar agent Mehtab Syed, the now-former head of the FBI’s Salt Lake City Field Office. MAGA!
What a joy it would be to depose those MAGA goons.