Nine Fired FBI Employees Sue Patel and Blanche Over Classified Documents Case Firings

Nine former FBI employees sued FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche in federal court in Washington on Thursday, October 15, 2026, saying they were fired in February for working on the classified documents investigation into President Donald Trump.

The plaintiffs are special agents, intelligence analysts and staff operations specialists. Their complaint, reported at about 70 pages, asks a judge to order their reinstatement, award back pay, and declare the February terminations unlawful.

Assigned, not volunteers

The lawsuit says the nine did not volunteer for the investigation, which the FBI called Plasmic Echo. They were assigned to it because they served on counterintelligence and counterespionage squads. Several took part in the search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, and one signed the affidavit presented to a magistrate judge, the complaint says.

That investigation began after Trump left the White House with classified records. Agents searched Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and recovered classified documents, and a federal indictment in Florida later charged Trump with dozens of felony counts. Trump denied wrongdoing. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in 2024, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith had been illegally appointed.

What the complaint says happened in February

The complaint says FBI Special Agent Miles Starr, serving on a Director's Advisory Team, demanded urgent access to the Plasmic Echo case file on February 23, 2026. The file named the employees who had worked on the case. The nine were fired over the next few days, on February 24 and 25, 2026, according to summaries of the filing.

Each plaintiff received a termination letter signed by Patel, the suit says. It says the letters claimed poor judgment and a lack of impartiality. Patel later told Congress the employees were fired for cause and after internal investigations. The plaintiffs say that is not true, and that they received no investigation, notice, hearing or chance to appeal before they were dismissed.

The filing also links the timing to Patel telling Reuters that the FBI, during the documents investigation, had subpoenaed his phone toll records, which show the date, time and length of calls but not their content. It notes that the firings followed days of criticism of Patel after video from the Winter Olympics in Milan showed him celebrating with the United States men's hockey team.

A century of service, the lawyers say

Between them, the nine have more than a century of FBI service, their lawyers say. Their past work, according to the complaint, included responding to the Boston Marathon bombing, recovering hostages held abroad, work on the counterintelligence threat from Iran, help on the investigation into pipe bombs placed in January 2021 near the Republican and Democratic national committee headquarters, and the investigation into the 2024 assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

One plaintiff, Harrison Kaufman, had been praised in person by Patel for pipe bomb work before he was fired, the complaint says.

Their attorneys, Margaret Donovan, Abbe Lowell and Rebecca Tinio, said the employees were fired for doing their jobs without bias. The FBI and the Justice Department had not publicly answered the complaint in the reports published on Thursday. NBC News said it had reached out to both for comment.

The case joins other lawsuits by FBI employees fired after working on investigations involving Trump. No hearing date was reported on Thursday.