About a dozen FBI staff who worked on Trump documents case fired, sources say

FBI Director Kash Patel fired about a dozen FBI staff members over Wednesday and Thursday, February 26-27, 2026, after alleging that former special counsel Jack Smith had improperly subpoenaed his phone records and those of Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles while they were private citizens. The terminated employees, including agents, analysts and support staff who had worked on Smith's probe into President Trump's retention of classified documents, were removed from their positions based on Patel's claim that the investigation had overstepped legal boundaries. Patel specifically stated in a Reuters interview that the FBI had secretly subpoenaed his records 'using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,' though he did not elaborate on these alleged pretexts. The phone records at the center of the controversy, known as toll records, contain call metadata such as originating and recipient numbers, date, time, and duration, but not the content of conversations. Such records are commonly obtained through grand jury subpoenas in criminal investigations to establish timelines and verify information. The firings represent the latest action in the Trump administration's broader effort to remove federal employees involved in investigations into the former president, following the dismissal of prosecutors who worked on Smith's team and agents involved in the Arctic Frost election investigation. Smith's investigations led to the first federal criminal indictments against a former president in U.S. history, though the classified document charges were dismissed in mid-2024 on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed, and the 2020 election charges were dropped after Trump won the 2024 race. Patel, who served in Trump's first administration as a representative to the National Archives and Records Administration, testified before a grand jury in the documents case in November 2022 and has claimed to have been present when Trump declassified material at issue. The FBI Agents Association has strongly condemned the recent firings, stating that the employees were terminated without due process, raising concerns about political interference in law enforcement operations.