A pair of fired FBI agents who worked on the investigation into President Donald J. Trump targeting him for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election are fighting back.
The unnamed former employees who worked on Operation Arctic Frost filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, accusing the two senior DOJ officials of “political retribution.”
In the filing, the agents who are identified as “John Doe 1” and “John Doe 2” claim that they were targeted for being “politically disloyal to President Trump” even though they only briefly worked on the investigation in administrative roles.
“Political support for President Trump is not a legal or appropriate requirement for the effective performance of plaintiffs’ respective roles within the F.B.I.,” the suit says, according to The New York Times. “Accordingly, perceived lack of political support for President Trump is an impermissible basis for termination of plaintiffs’ F.B.I. employment.”
According to the filing, the former agents were terminated last year after GOP lawmakers “publicly released unredacted documents associated with Arctic Frost, which contained one Plaintiff’s name” and “[t]he legislators publicly declared Arctic Frost agents to be partisan operatives.” The firings were “based solely on their assignment to Arctic Frost.”
“FBI Director Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel summarily fired each Plaintiff. No internal investigation, notice, or hearing preceded their firings. Nor were Plaintiffs presented with any evidence purportedly supporting their firings or given an opportunity to appeal,” the lawsuit states.
“The agents filed the suit, which asks a federal judge to reinstate them at the F.B.I., under the pseudonyms John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 because they say they have faced threats on social media from members of the public calling for their imprisonment — even their execution. Their lawyers say the threats came after Mr. Trump, Mr. Patel and others described many of the agents who had worked on Arctic Frost as being ‘corrupt actors’ or taking part in a ‘political witch hunt,’” the New York Times reported.
Arctic Frost was the operation used for the targeting of Trump, his allies and GOP lawmakers who were spied on by unscrupulous former special counsel Jack Smith and his goons, a sweeping political witch hunt that drew a furious reaction from lawmakers whose phone activity was surveilled.
Sen. Chuck Grassley just revealed that Jack Smith sent a subpoena to Verizon to tap my Senate office phone.
This comes after learning that nearly 20% of Senate Republicans’ cellphones, including mine, were also subpoenaed.
Arctic Frost is the Biden DOJ’s Watergate, and they… pic.twitter.com/qBR5lT9XIV
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 29, 2025
According to The New York Times, the suit “also claimed that Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the powerful Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had worked in ‘apparent coordination’ with Mr. Patel and Mr. Trump ‘to target and disparage F.B.I. personnel involved with Arctic Frost.'”
In January, Patel shared an image of a bizarre trophy that members of a special Arctic Frost unit created as an example of how the Bureau had become a “diseased temple” under the Biden regime.
People ask why I said the old FBI was a diseased temple.
This is what corruption looks like when it thinks no one is watching:
➡️ A self-awarded trophy celebrating Arctic Frost, made by FBI officials.
I disbanded CR-15 and removed the corrupt actors involved.
So when legacy… pic.twitter.com/5S6xb9XyaE
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) January 22, 2026
In a March 2025 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Bondi said, “a lot of people in the FBI and also in the Department of Justice who despise Donald Trump, despise us, don’t want to be there.”
“You have to do the right thing and right now we’re going to root them out,” she added. “We will find them, and they will no longer be employed.”
“These FBI Agents are total Scum, in their own way no better than the insurrectionists in Portland, Minnesota, Los Angeles, etc.,” Trump wrote in a January post to Truth Social. “Kash better get them out, NOW!”
“The government fired them not because they did anything wrong, but solely because of their assignment to an investigation involving then-former President Trump, and a perception that the agents were therefore political non-supporters of President Trump,” said Elizabeth Tulis, an attorney for the ex-agents, according to CBS News.
“The First Amendment forbids this kind of political retaliation,” she added.
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