FBI Director Kash Patel may have exposed President Donald Trump to the risk of deposition, according to a lawsuit brought by senior FBI agents he fired, national security journalist Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler wrote on Thursday.
The lawsuit from the former agents, Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans, makes a lot of damning claims about how Patel operated, including that he said they could not have voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris if they wanted to pass vetting for the Trump administration.
"These details discrediting Kash’s leadership are matched by details describing how these men, especially Driscoll, were fired because of their efforts to treat FBI agents with respect and dignity, intervening to prevent firings or mitigate the impact of them," wrote Wheeler. "A long passage describes Driscoll’s efforts to undercut Emil Bove’s jihad against agents who — like Bove and Driscoll themselves — had participated in the January 6 investigation. This includes an anecdote about how Bove bolloxed an attempt to send an email to the entire FBI workforce to complain about Driscoll."
Above all, Wheeler said, the lawsuit claims that Patel was constantly making damning statements about himself, including that "he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed."
According to the lawsuit, she noted: "On or about August 5, 2025, in a conversation with Driscoll, Patel plainly stated the reasoning behind his firing of FBI employees that Mr. Driscoll sought to defend. In sum and substance, Patel admitted that his superiors, who he referred to as 'they' and who Driscoll understood to include [the DOJ and White House], had directed him to fire anyone who they identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against President Donald J. Trump. 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," because, in his own words, “the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it.”
Normally, "it actually is hard to demand that FBI Directors and their Deputies sit for a deposition," wrote Wheeler. "There’s a whole body of precedent that requires plaintiffs to work their way up to more senior officials. For example, Peter Strzok (the circumstances of whose firing and subsequent lawsuit, which made some of the very same First Amendment and Due Process claims, Driscoll and Jensen presumably also know well) had to fight hard to get Chris Wray to sit for a deposition, and even harder to get Trump to sit for one."
However, she concluded, the remark about Trump not forgetting the agents who wanted to put him in jail changes all that. "Kash, because he ran his mouth, may have made it easier to demand a deposition of President Trump in this case."