Nine FBI Employees Fired Over the Mar-a-Lago Documents Case Sue Patel and DOJ, Say ‘Article II’ Firings Were Retribution and Patel Misled Congress
Nine former FBI special agents, intelligence analysts and staff operations specialists who worked on the Mar-a-Lago classified-documents investigation sued FBI Director Kash Patel, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the FBI and the Justice Department on Thursday, alleging they were fired in February 2026 solely because of that assignment and that Patel then gave Congress false accounts of why.
The 70-page complaint, Bacon v. Patel, No. 1:26-cv-03604, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Abbe Lowell of Lowell & Associates and Margaret Donovan and Christopher Mattei of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder. It asks the court to declare the firings unconstitutional, order the nine reinstated with back pay, and bar further personnel actions against them without due process.
The allegations in the complaint have not been tested in court. In a statement to The Digital Free Press, the plaintiffs' attorneys, Margaret Donovan of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, Abbe D. Lowell of Lowell & Associates and Rebecca S. Tinio, said the former agents and analysts "were fired because they did their jobs, as they always did, to follow the facts and law without bias or favor. To this administration, this is an offense. To the rest of us, it is heroic." They added: "This lawsuit will prove their unlawful dismissal and hold the administration accountable for this blatant attack on the rule of law."
Asked for comment, the FBI National Press Office referred The Digital Free Press to an Oct. 16 post on X by the bureau's FBI Rapid Response account, which shared an Axios report on the lawsuit and said: “This FBI has helped deliver the most prolific reduction in violent crime in U.S. history. Who wants to join the mission?” The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.
WHO THE PLAINTIFFS ARE
The lead plaintiff, Jennifer Bacon, spent nine years as an Air Force officer before joining the FBI in 2010, rose to unit chief in the Counterespionage Section and was fired Feb. 25, 2026, the complaint says. Jeremy Linton, a former Navy information warfare officer who joined the Bureau in 2016, was fired the same day. The other plaintiffs are Gilbert Granados, Erin Matanic, Rachel Vaccaro, Zach Feldman, Danielle Ray, Catherine Herrera and Harrison Kaufman. Together, the complaint says, they have more than a century of FBI service and worked on cases including the Boston Marathon bombing, the attempt on President Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, the recovery of Americans held abroad and the interdiction of Iranian-made munitions bound for the Houthis.
All were assigned to the counterintelligence and intelligence squads that investigated the retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the case the FBI code-named “Plasmic Echo.” The complaint says they did not volunteer for it and that two of them, Linton and Ray, served Patel with a grand jury subpoena in September 2022 after he publicly claimed to know that Trump had declassified the materials; Patel moved to quash, was ordered to testify, invoked the Fifth Amendment and later testified under a grant of immunity, the complaint says, citing news reports.
The complaint notes a Feb. 23, 2026 order in the Florida criminal case bars the plaintiffs from sharing anything in the special counsel’s unreleased Volume II report, so its account of their work is limited to the public record.
HOW THE FIRINGS HAPPENED, ACCORDING TO THE COMPLAINT
The suit alleges that after the inauguration, then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, citing pressure from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, demanded that interim FBI leadership hand over the names of everyone who took part in the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago so they could be terminated, and that acting FBI leaders refused. Over two days in February 2026, it says, Patel signed termination letters invoking “Article II” of the Constitution that accused each plaintiff of “poor judgment and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of the government.”
There was no internal investigation, notice, hearing or appeal, the complaint says, and each plaintiff’s Standard Form 50 personnel record shows the removal was not “for cause.” Two of them, Bacon and Ray, were later issued letters of good standing under the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act. When Bacon asked a senior official why she was being fired, the complaint says, he answered that he did not know the specific reason, “but that it was related to Mar-a-Lago,” and gave her about an hour to pack.
A month later, the complaint says, Blanche stated publicly that the administration had “cleaned house” at the FBI and that there “isn’t a single man or woman with a gun, federal agent, still in that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump.”
WHAT PATEL TOLD CONGRESS
The complaint devotes a section to Patel’s testimony. At the House Intelligence Committee’s worldwide-threats hearing on March 19, 2026, it says, Patel answered a question from Rep. Steve Cohen by saying that “when these terminations occur, there are internal investigations conducted by the careers at the FBI that highlight unethical or inappropriate conduct, and it’s up to me to make the decision,” and that “people were terminated for violating their ethical obligations.” The complaint says no internal investigation of any plaintiff ever took place. Patel also said he was “not familiar” with whether the fired employees worked counterintelligence and declined further comment because the firings were “pending in litigation.” At that point, the complaint says, only Linton had filed anything, a claim with the Merit Systems Protection Board.
At the Senate Judiciary Committee’s FBI oversight hearing on Sept. 15, 2026, the complaint says, Patel told Sen. Richard Blumenthal that the plaintiffs could be called experts on Iran “but they definitely are not,” while touting that the Bureau had “arrested 55% more spies from Iran than any FBI in the history of” the agency. “In fact, they were,” the complaint says of the plaintiffs’ expertise, adding that their open counterintelligence and counterterrorism cases were not properly handed off when they were walked out.
The suit brings First Amendment claims for association and speech, a Fifth Amendment due process claim, and, for Bacon and Linton, a separation-of-powers claim. It argues that an “Article II” firing is “an invention of the current Administration” meant “to convert all federal employees into political appointees.”
The case joins earlier suits by former FBI officials over 2025 and 2026 removals, including one filed in March by fired senior executives against Patel and former Attorney General Pam Bondi. No judge had been listed on the docket as of Friday morning.
Sources: FBI Rapid Response on X, https://x.com/FBI_Response/status/2111121838914875760; Complaint, Bacon v. Patel, No. 1:26-cv-03604 (D.D.C. Oct. 15, 2026), via CourtListener: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.297658/gov.uscourts.dcd.297658.1.0_1.pdf | Docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74968984/bacon-v-patel/ | Senate Judiciary Committee hearing page, Sept. 15, 2026: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/oversight-of-the-federal-bureau-of-investigation-09-15-2026
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