FBI fires more agents who investigated Trump, then reverses course: Sources

Highlights:

• Agents fired amid ongoing personnel actions in Trump-related probes
• Senate subpoenas reveal FBI, DOJ employee names in investigation
• Lawsuit claims White House pressured FBI to fire agents who handled Trump-related cases
• Several of the terminations were later abruptly reversed

The FBI has fired four agents who worked on former Special Counsel Jack Smith's team investigating President Donald Trump, although some of those terminations were later reversed, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The move is the latest in a string of personnel actions targeting employees who worked on probes looking into Trump or his allies.

One of the fired agents, Jeremy Desor, has been targeted in recent days on social media after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, a Republican, publicly released more than 1,000 pages of subpoenas from Smith's investigation, code-named "Arctic Frost," into attempts to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

The subpoenas did not redact any of the names of the FBI or Justice Department employees who were involved.

Another fired agent, Jamie Garman, was initially placed on administrative leave several weeks ago, shortly after Grassley released other records showing that Smith had sought limited "tolling data" from the cell phones of eight Republican senators and one House of Representatives member in the days before and after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Two other agents who worked on Smith's team who were told they were being terminated on Monday - Blaire Toleman and David Geist - were later informed the terminations were being rescinded, according to four of the sources.

Toleman is now based out of the bureau's Chicago office and previously led a public corruption squad that was shut down by the bureau earlier this year. Geist previously served as an assistant special agent in charge in the Washington Field office during the time of Smith's investigation and is now assigned to an FBI unit that provides rapid assistance in critical incidents, such as hostage rescue.

Several other agents were also terminated on Monday, only to later have those firings reversed, two of the sources added.

Reuters could not immediately determine what prompted the about-face by the FBI. A spokesperson could not be reached for comment, and had previously declined to comment on the firings.

Reuters could not immediately reach the four agents for comment.

"INACCURATE ASSERTIONS"

"The public has a right to know how the government's spending their hard-earned tax dollars, and if agents were engaged in wrongdoing they ought to be held accountable," Grassley said in a statement to Reuters. "Transparency brings accountability."

Criminal investigations often include reviews of phones' tolling data, which contains basic details such as the duration and general location of calls, but does not reveal the contents of the communications.

Senators have since accused the FBI, without evidence, of "spying" on them, prompting Smith's lawyers to respond with a letter seeking to "correct inaccurate assertions" being made by the lawmakers whose tolling records were subpoenaed.

Grassley and other Trump allies have alleged the FBI's probe improperly targeted a wide range of Republicans, though Trump was the only one who was charged federally in the 2020 election case.

Two other FBI agents also involved in reviewing the lawmakers' tolling data were fired in October at the same time Garman was placed on administrative leave, three sources previously confirmed to Reuters.

Since January, dozens of FBI agents, prosecutors and support personnel who worked on Smith's investigation or handled cases investigating individuals involved in the January 6 attack have been fired from the Justice Department.

The FBI's former Acting Director Brian Driscoll, who sought to shield agents from being targeted for working on January 6 cases, and the former head of the FBI's Washington Field Office who supervised some of those cases, sued FBI Director Kash Patel and the Justice Department after being fired earlier this year.

In the lawsuit, they allege that the White House pressured the bureau to fire people involved in Trump-related cases.