Several of the FBI agents and personnel fired last week for their work on Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s retention of documents at Mar-a-Lago were members of a counterintelligence squad that focused on media leaks, global espionage, and threats that included those involving the Iranian regime, several sources familiar with the dismissals told the Sun.
The ouster of at least a dozen staffers from a counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which operates out of the Washington Field Office, was ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, according to four former officials familiar with the dismissals. The dismissals came just days before the start of Operation Epic Fury and, separately, a deadly mass shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, by a man reportedly wearing a sweatshirt that said, “Property of Allah,” beneath which was a T-shirt that was “emblazoned with a design similar to the Iranian flag,” CBS News reported Monday.
CI-12 focuses on media leaks, global espionage, and international threats against America emanating from countries such as Cuba and Iran, former FBI officials tell the Sun. More broadly, CI squads are the lead domestic teams for investigating insider threats and foreign intelligence activity on American soil.
In 2020, CI-12 assisted in monitoring potential retaliatory actions by Iranian-backed actors on American soil following a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport that killed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps major general Qasem Soleimani, an operation ordered by Mr. Trump, former FBI officials tell the Sun.
Unlike the CIA, which collects foreign intelligence overseas and has no arrest authority, FBI counterintelligence squads combine intelligence work with federal law enforcement powers, including executing search warrants and bringing espionage or leak cases to indictment.
But the agents and staffers dismissed from CI-12 had previously been assigned, in some capacity, to the Justice Department’s investigation — under the aegis of the Biden administration at the time — into Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, sources tell the Sun. The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 to seize the files enraged Mr. Trump, who called it a “travesty of justice.”
Three months later, Mr. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel. He would ultimately charge Mr. Trump with felonies over his retention of the documents at his private club. The case was dismissed after federal judge Aileen Cannon ruled Mr. Smith’s appointment unconstitutional. The Justice Department dropped the remaining related charges after Mr. Trump’s reelection in 2024.
Last week, Mr. Patel told Reuters that he discovered that Mr. Smith and the FBI — during the interregnum — had secretly obtained his phone records, along with those of Trump aide and current White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, as part of Mr. Smith’s investigations into Mar-a-Lago as well as into January 6.
Mr. Patel, 45, characterized Mr. Smith’s subpoena of his phone records — when he was a former Trump administration official informally advising Mr. Trump — as evidence of a weaponized Justice Department under President Biden. Ms. Wiles was, at the time, running Mr. Trump’s reelection campaign.
“It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now-White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,” Mr. Patel said in a statement to Reuters.
Within hours after the Reuters report’s publication, the FBI dismissed at least a dozen of its employees for their role in the Mar-a-Lago investigation. Those fired were also believed to have been involved in efforts to obtain phone records of Mr. Patel and Ms. Wiles, according to reports.
Reuters was unable to confirm which records the FBI obtained, who authorized the subpoenas, or which of Mr. Smith’s prosecutions of Mr. Trump the subpoenas concerned.
Some former officials accused Mr. Patel of using the dismissals to distract from unflattering media coverage of his appearance at the Winter Olympics in Milan, where he was filmed chugging a beer while celebrating with the USA Men’s Hockey team inside their locker room following their gold medal win against Team Canada.
The incident brought Mr. Patel’s frequent use of a private government-owned plane — which he is required by Congress to fly on for personal and business purposes — back in the spotlight.
Mr. Trump reportedly “conveyed his displeasure” at Mr. Patel over his behavior and use of government aircraft for his Milan trip, NBC News.
At the time, an FBI spokesman, Ben Williamson, said Mr. Patel’s flight to Italy was for a pre-arranged work trip that included, among other things, brief meetings with the Olympic security team and local officials, capped off with Sunday’s gold-medal game.
Mr. Williamson did not respond to questions from the Sun over the weekend.
In 2021, the CI-12 unit was involved in the investigation into a Defense Department linguist, Mariam Taha Thompson, who transmitted classified national defense information to a Lebanese national that she believed would be passed on to the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist organization, Hezbollah. Thompson had used her access to classified national defense information to provide her source with the identities of at least eight clandestine human assets and at least 10 U.S. targets, according to court documents. She was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2021.
Former FBI officials said that many of those fired last week played a role in the FBI’s Iranian counterintelligence operations.
“The summary dismissal of experienced Agents and analysts, especially those with experience in Iranian counter- intelligence, seriously undermines the FBI workforce in addressing the significant and ever-increasing threats our nation faces today. We strongly urge that Director Patel and FBI leadership end summary dismissals and follow FBI policy and the U.S. Constitution with respect to due process for all FBI employees,” the president of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Michael E. Anderson, tells the Sun.
The terminations of the FBI personnel last week increased pressure on the Washington Field Office, which had already sustained multiple rounds of departures tied to Mr. Smith’s sweeping January 6th investigation; to a group of agents photographed while kneeling during a racial justice protest in 2020; and to other cases that Mr. Patel maintained were evidence of “total weaponization and politicization” of the bureau under his predecessor Christopher Wray, who authorized the Mar-a -Lago raid.
In an August interview with a Fox Business Network host, Larry Kudlow, Mr. Patel said there was “no constitutional basis” and “no lawful predicate” for the FBI and Justice Department at the time to have authorized and carried out the Mar-a-Lago raid.
In May, Mr. Patel shuttered the Washington Field Office’s public corruption unit, known as CR-15, for having worked closely with Mr. Smith on two federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump, including his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In January, Mr. Patel shared a picture on social media of what he described as a “self-awarded” trophy made by members of CR-15 to commemorate the Arctic Frost investigation and called the old FBI “a diseased temple.”
“I disbanded CR-15 and removed the corrupt actors involved. So, when legacy media cries that President Trump’s FBI fired people and made sweeping changes, I have one response: You’re damn right we did.”
In a statement, the FBI Agents Association said the firings violated the due process rights of FBI employees, similar to previous dismissals by Mr. Patel throughout his year at the helm of the bureau, and were “ultimately putting the nation at greater risk.”
“These actions weaken the bureau by stripping away critical expertise and destabilizing the workforce,” the FBIAA said in a statement.
Last week, federal Judge Aileen Cannon permanently banned the Justice Department from releasing Mr. Smith’s final report on his Mar-A-Lago case, ruling that doing so would constitute a “manifest injustice” to both Mr. Trump and his defendants. The charges were dropped when Mr. Trump won reelection.
In 2022, Mr. Patel testified before a federal grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago documents case after he was granted limited immunity by a federal judge. At the time, Mr. Patel asserted that Mr. Trump declassified the documents that were eventually stored in Mar-A-Lago shortly after he left office in 2021.
Since launching early Saturday, Operation Epic Fury has struck more than 1,000 targets in Iran, U.S. Central Command said Sunday. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed Saturday in the joint United States and Israel attacks. Three U.S. troops who were part of a unit in Kuwait were killed in action, and five more were seriously wounded, the U.S. military announced Sunday.
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Sunday that the gunman who opened fire outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden in downtown Austin, killing two people and wounding 14, was a Senegalese national who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2013. The alleged shooter, Ndiaga Diagna, was wearing a sweatshirt that said, “Property of Allah” and a T-shirt with an Iranian flag design at the time of the incident, according to reports. He was shot and killed by Austin Police officers during the attack.
On Sunday, Mr. Patel said he was putting the FBI counterintelligence teams on high alert for threats to the homeland, such as the incident in Austin.
