Three former high-ranking FBI officials have sued the FBI director, Kash Patel, his deputy director, Daniel Bongino, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing the three of unconstitutionally firing them because “the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,” according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Attorneys for the three FBI officials — a former acting FBI director, Brian Driscoll; a former assistant director in charge, Steve Jensen, and a special agent in charge, Spencer Evans — alleged that Mr. Patel executed the August 8 firings, which were done through “cursory, single-page letters,” despite having “openly acknowledged the unlawfulness of his actions.”

“Patel explained that he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President,” the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court at Washington, said.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment. 

Mr. Driscoll served as acting director prior to Mr. Patel’s confirmation in February. In January, Mr. Driscoll resisted helping a former acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, in identifying those FBI employees who were involved in the January 6 investigation and dismissing eight senior executives.

In private meeting with Mr. Driscoll and the special agent then in charge of the FBI’s New York office, Robert Kissane, Mr. Bove told the men that he was being pressured by the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, to see “symmetrical action at the FBI as had been happening at the DOJ,” according to the lawsuit.

“Bove made clear that he and Miller wanted to see personnel action like reassignment, removals, and terminations at the FBI, similar to the firings and reassignments of senior attorneys at DOJ that had occurred since January 20, 2025,” the lawsuit alleges.

During a February meeting, as news coverage of Mr. Driscoll’s standoff with the Department of Justice began to intensify, Mr. Bove said he considered Mr. Driscoll to be “a bad leader” who was responsible for the negative morale within the FBI, according to the lawsuit. Mr. Bove, who was recently confirmed to a lifetime judicial appointment on the Third Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, was also upset by a video created by FBI employees that portrayed him as the villain Bane and Mr. Driscoll as Batman.

“Driscoll responded that he did not make the video, nor could he control unknown individuals’ feelings or expressions of said feelings,” according to the lawsuit.

Mr. Jensen, a 19-year FBI veteran and father of 10 children, played a key role in the bureau’s January 6 investigation, the largest federal criminal probe in American history.

Months before Mr. Jensen’s dismissal, Messrs. Bongino and Patel promoted Mr. Jensen to run the FBI’s Washington field office, saying he embodied “what the American public demands of FBI agents.” The promotion infuriated Mr. Trump’s MAGA base, who directed its vitriol at Messrs. Bongino and Patel’s social media accounts.

“Both Patel and Bongino lamented to Jensen that they were spending ‘a lot of political capital’ to keep him in the ADIC position, a position that Jensen had not sought in the first place,” according to the lawsuit. 

Mr. Bongino allegedly pressured Mr. Jensen to fire special agent Walter Giardina, who in 2022 arrested a sometime Trump White House trade adviser, Peter Navarro, at a Washington airport on contempt of Congress charges. Mr. Navarro, then 74, served four months in prison for refusing to cooperate with the Democrat-controlled January 6 committee. Mr. Navarro at the time called Mr. Giardina and another special agent “kind Nazis.”  

Mr. Jensen pushed back at Mr. Bongino’s order to fire Mr. Giardina, a military veteran and a longtime FBI special agent who was protected by “certain rights.”

“He explained that Bongino would likely be deposed in a lawsuit should Giardina choose to challenge his unlawful firing. Bongino did not pursue further his demand that Giardina be summarily fired in that meeting,” the lawsuit alleged. 

All three former FBI officials are seeking immediate reinstatement and back pay, among other relief.