In lawsuit, three former FBI leaders say they were fired for insufficient loyalty

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI acting director Brian Driscoll and two other former senior officials who were fired without cause last month sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, alleging they were dismissed in a "campaign of retribution" that targeted officials viewed as insufficiently loyal.

The lawsuit alleges that FBI Director Kash Patel said he had been ordered to fire anyone who had worked on a criminal investigation against President Donald Trump, and that his own job depended on their removal.

“The FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it," Patel told Driscoll, according to the lawsuit.

Steve Jensen, the former assistant director of the Washington field office, and Spencer Evans, the former top official in the Las Vegas field office, are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Driscoll, who temporarily served as the bureau's director early this year, was viewed as a hero by some in the bureau after he sought to shield them from being targeted by Justice Department leadership for their role in investigating people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed bid to overturn Trump's election defeat.

Driscoll alleges that while he was being vetted ahead of Trump's January 2025 inauguration, he asked by a White House transition staffer, Paul Ingrassia, about "when did you start supporting President Trump" and whether he had voted for Democratic candidates in the last five elections. He said he refused to answer those questions.

Driscoll says he was told later that evening by Emil Bove, a former Trump defense attorney who was due to take a top position in the Justice Department, that he had "failed" the vetting interview and that Ingrassia had reported that he was not "based out" enough - a term he understood to mean loyalty to Trump's political ideology.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Andy Sullivan, David Gregorio and Alistair Bell)