'Past his prime' GOP senator Grassley caught up in FBI lawsuit: report

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R), the powerful chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been implicated in a lawsuit filed by two FBI agents who were terminated by Director Kash Patel for their work on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation of Donald Trump.

According to reporting from The Hill, the 92-year-old Republican played a significant role in precipitating the agents' firings by releasing unredacted materials about the criminal investigation into Trump — materials that exposed the agents to public backlash and eventual removal from the bureau.

While the suits don't name Grassley as a defendant, they single out his actions as a factor in the agents' alleged wrongful termination. The lawsuits assert the agents were fired solely based on their assignment to Smith's investigation team — work that the FBI now characterizes as "somehow hostile partisan acts."

Grassley's unredacted disclosures included the names of the agents, something their attorney argues directly sparked both online harassment and internal backlash from the FBI as it culled employees aligned with the Smith probe, The Hill is reporting.

"It is appalling to me that lawmakers would so carelessly mischaracterize these unredacted disclosures, knowing that the direct result of their actions is to cause an ill-informed online mob to go after honest, hardworking federal law enforcement officers," said Margaret Donovan, a former federal prosecutor representing two agents suing the FBI claimed in a statement obtained by The Hill.

Donovan noted the Iowa lawmaker's age as a possible contributing factor that led to the misguided firing.

"The best-case scenario is that Grassley is so far past his prime, he is clueless as to what he's doing. The worst-case scenario is that Grassley and others are intentionally trying to harm federal agents who dared to investigate criminal activity, which happened to implicate a political ally," Donovan said.

The report points out that the litigation raises broader questions about the Senate Judiciary Committee's sweeping investigation into Smith's probe — and Grassley's role within the conservative ecosystem focused on what Republicans have branded as "rot" at the FBI.