A former FBI agent revealed new details Tuesday about his firing under Director Kash Patel, saying he was dismissed over perceived disloyalty to President Donald Trump while caring for his wife, who was battling aggressive cancer.
“It was a nightmare,” said Walter Giardina, a veteran agent at the FBI who was among several ousted under what they called Trump’s “campaign of retribution,” speaking with the New York Times in a report published Tuesday.
He is among several who filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last week,
Giardina is a 1999 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and was deployed to Iraq following the United States’ 2003 invasion. He also served in Afghanistan in 2011.
In June this year, however, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) called into question Giardina’s impartiality at the FBI after allegedly being contacted by an FBI whistleblower.
Giardina was among those at the agency assigned to the Mueller probe, the investigation into whether Trump had engaged in espionage with Russia to help win the 2016 presidential election, and an assignment that painted a target on Giardina’s back.
Patel, a strong ally of Trump's, allegedly said that his agency had previously “tried to put the president in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,” according to the lawsuit filed by the ousted FBI agents.
The allegations against Giardina snowballed, with Grassley accusing the FBI agent of having an “animosity toward President Trump,” and in a letter to Patel, suggested he may have even destroyed records. Giardina denied the allegations, all the while caring for his wife whose health was quickly deteriorating.
Giardina’s wife ultimately succumbed to the cancer, and two days after her funeral, he aggressively defended his record at the agency in a high-stakes meeting with bureau officials.
“It was unfathomable to see my entire life, which has been focused on family and the FBI, to be torn apart in an instant,” Giardina told the New York Times.
Giardina was ultimately fired, an ousting that was described as “inexcusably cruel” in the lawsuit filed against the agency, as were several other FBI officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the Trump administration, the plaintiffs allege.