Kash Patel fires two FBI agents who worked on the Trump investigation

Kash Patel, the FBI director, this week fired two agents identified as having worked with Jack Smith, the special counsel who led federal investigations into Donald J. Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

The agents, both veterans of the office with excellent records, had been identified as associates of Mr. Smith in documents obtained by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, these sources said.

Mr. Grassley worked closely with the Trump administration to purge the FBI of officials he appointed as part of a Biden-era weaponization of the agency against Mr. Trump and other Republicans. Most of the agents he targeted had little say in the cases they were assigned to work on.

The two agents Mr. Patel fired this week worked in a special unit in the bureau’s Washington field office. They have not been formally accused of misconduct nor have they been investigated. As he has with other firings, Mr. Patel cited Article II of the Constitution and his right to fire anyone he chooses without cause.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A person close to the two agents asked that their names not be used because they had been the subject of threats from Trump supporters.

The layoffs were reported earlier by NBC News.

One of the fired agents was a decorated combat veteran in Iraq, months away from retirement. The firing could jeopardize the officer’s government pension, according to a person who spoke to the officer.

In August, Mr. Patel summarily fired two other agents in the Washington office, Chris Meyer and Walter Giardina, who also worked with Mr. Smith.

Mr. Grassley had cited an anonymous FBI whistleblower who contacted his office to question Mr. Giardina’s impartiality, an allegation Mr. Giardina vehemently denied.

Steven J. Jensen, head of the Washington field office, urged Mr. Patel to protect Mr. Giardina, whom he believed was unfairly targeted, according to a lawsuit he filed last month against Mr. Patel and other Trump appointees.

The manager ignored him and subsequently fired Mr. Jensen.

Earlier this week, Mr. Grassley released an unclassified document from 2023 showing that the FBI analyzed the phone records of nine Republican lawmakers as part of Mr. Smith’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, claimed the office “tapped” his phone.

The one-page document, which Mr. Hawley had enlarged on a large poster next to him, appeared to contradict that claim, revealing only that Mr. Smith’s team had requested permission to scrape metadata to monitor communications between Mr. Trump, his associates and lawmakers around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.