Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in Washington, D.C., May 23, 2017. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection Photo by Glenn Fawcett/Flickr)
Since returning to the White House on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump has made a concerted effort to give the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI an ultra-MAGA makeover — including choosing far-right conspiracy theorist Kash Patel for FBI director. Many non-MAGA veterans of the FBI have either left the agency or been fired, and some of them are now pointing the finger at Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
The Hill's Rebecca Beitsch, in an article published on May 7, reports, "several former FBI agents are arguing Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) played a significant role in their firings — removals that followed his release of a number of unredacted materials about the criminal investigation into President Trump. That assertion was made in two separate lawsuits against the FBI that don't name Grassley as a defendant but point to his actions as a factor precipitating the firing of agents who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021."
The lawsuits, according to Beitsch, allege that the agents were fired simply because of their work on Smith's election interference case against Trump for DOJ.
"The litigation also raises questions about the Senate Judiciary Committee's sprawling investigation into Smith's Arctic Frost probe, as well as Grassley's role in a conservative ecosystem focused on addressing what Republicans have branded as 'rot' at the FBI," Beitsch explains. "Grassley's disclosures include the unredacted names of agents, something their attorney argues sparks not only online vitriol but backlash from the bureau as it culls employees."
Grassley, now 92, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1980. Before entering the Senate, he spent six years in the U.S. House of Representatives. And Grassley served in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1959-1975.
Margaret Donovan, the former DOJ federal prosecutor now representing two ex-FBI agents who are suing the FBI, told The Hill, "It is appalling to me that lawmakers would so carelessly mischaracterize these unredacted disclosures, knowing that the direct result of their actions is to cause an ill-informed online mob to go after honest, hardworking federal law enforcement officers. The best-case scenario is that Grassley is so far past his prime, he is clueless as to what he's doing. The worst-case scenario is that Grassley and others are intentionally trying to harm federal agents who dared to investigate criminal activity, which happened to implicate a political ally."
