2026-02-26 10:30
publication
2026-02-26 10:30
At least 10 FBI officers investigating President Donald Trump's unlawful storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago have been fired, CNN reported on Wednesday. This is another wave of purges in the agency, interpreted as retaliation against employees involved in trials against the head of state.
According to the station, which cited four sources familiar with the details of the case, FBI Director Kash Patel ordered the firing of some of his subordinates and also ordered the initiation of a broader internal investigation. The decision was announced just hours after Patel revealed to Reuters that as part of an investigation into documents at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence, the office obtained metadata from the phones of Patel and Susie Wiles, the current White House chief of staff.
The surveillance of the FBI chief's phone records and Wiles was conducted in 2022-23 as part of an investigation overseen by Jack Smith, a former special spokesman for the Justice Department. He investigated two federal cases against Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after the end of his first presidential term (2017-21). According to Reuters findings, the FBI checked the telephone records of Patel and Wiles at a time when these people did not hold public office but remained in Trump's entourage.
“It is outrageous and deeply disturbing that previous FBI leadership secretly requested my telephone records,” Patel said in a statement sent to Reuters. He thus referred to the FBI's decision during the administration of former President Joe Biden. He also blamed the officers for using “trivial pretexts” to hide “the entire process in the case files and avoid any control.”
The series of layoffs is another wave of purges
American media point out that this series of dismissals is another example of Patel's purges, which has previously dismissed officers and other employees related to investigations into documents at Mar-a-Lago and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Last year, the head of the FBI dismissed dozens of people involved in investigations against Trump.
According to five sources in the New York Times, the layoffs in the FBI will not end with the 10 officers mentioned.
Patel himself has been the subject of Smith's investigations for years and testified before his grand jury in 2022 as part of the Mar-a-Lago document proceedings.
According to the investigation, after leaving office, Trump allegedly took thousands of government documents from the White House, including hundreds classified, and kept them at a private residence in Florida. The services investigated the controversial thesis of the current FBI director that Trump declassified materials from the residence before the end of his first term. In turn, the seizure of Wiles' telephone records was intended to help determine whether Trump's lawyers were used to pressure witnesses. (PAP)
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