Nine former FBI employees who were fired over their work on the investigation into President Donald Trump's handling of classified documents are suing to get their jobs back.

The group of agents, intelligence analysts and staff operations specialists filed the lawsuit Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., against the Justice Department and the FBI. They say they were "unlawfully terminated solely for their role in the probe," ABC News reported.

"Political Retribution"

The lawsuit calls the February firings "political retribution" and says they served the president's "personal vendetta." The former employees are asking the court to reinstate them, award back pay and declare the terminations unlawful.

According to the complaint, the firings came without any internal investigation or disciplinary process. The employees say they received no notice, no hearing and no chance to appeal.

"The Plaintiffs were unlawfully terminated not for any cause or any legitimate reason," the lawsuit states. It also argues that the government "incorrectly presumed to know the personal political convictions" of the employees.

The group's attorneys, Margaret Donovan, Abbe Lowell and Rebecca Tinio, said in a statement that the employees "were fired because they did their jobs." They added, "To this administration, this is an offense. To the rest of us, it is heroic."

Who Was Fired

The plaintiffs, who have not been publicly named, had more than a century of combined service at the bureau, according to ABC News 4.

Their past work included the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, hostage recoveries and the investigation into the 2024 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The lawsuit says they did not volunteer for the classified documents case, which was code-named "Plasmic Echo." Instead, they were assigned to it through their work on counterintelligence and counterespionage squads.

The suit also says the firings caused an "immeasurable loss" to national security.

Patel's "Weaponized" Claim

FBI Director Kash Patel has testified to Congress that fired employees had "weaponized" the bureau, a claim the plaintiffs deny. Before leading the FBI, Patel was a conservative podcaster who called the Mar-a-Lago search "unlawful" and described the agents who carried it out as "corrupt government gangsters," The Associated Press reported.

The Mar-a-Lago agents and analysts were fired in February, after Patel told Reuters that the FBI had subpoenaed his phone toll records as part of the investigation. The attorneys argue the employees' "fate was sealed" well before then.

No response from the FBI or the Justice Department was included in initial reports on the lawsuit.

The case is one of a growing number of legal challenges to mass firings at the FBI under Patel. Earlier dismissals targeted agents who worked on the investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Shortly after Trump's January 2025 inauguration, a top Justice Department official demanded a list of FBI employees who had worked on Trump-related investigations. Bureau staff saw the request as a possible first step toward mass firings. Over the following year, the FBI and Justice Department fired waves of employees involved in those cases.

Patel's leadership has drawn scrutiny on other fronts as well, including the bureau's loosened hiring standards.

The Case Behind the Firings

In 2022, the FBI searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and recovered classified records. Trump was later indicted in Florida on dozens of felony counts, accused of improperly storing the documents, showing them to people without clearance and obstructing government efforts to get them back. Trump denied wrongdoing.

In 2024, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case. She ruled that special counsel Jack Smith had been illegally appointed by the Biden Justice Department.

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