Boxes of classified documents at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida (Image: US Department of Justice)
On Saturday, President Donald Trump authorized massive military action against Iran. On Sunday, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, put FBI counterintelligence teams on high alert for threats to the homeland, after a Texas gunman killed two Americans and wounded 14 others in an attack the Bureau is investigating as a possible act of terrorism.
Not part of any FBI investigation will be at least a dozen staffers, including agents, who reportedly were fired last week for their roles in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of President Donald Trump’s possibly unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return dozens of classified documents and other items from the White House, which he kept at Mar-a-Lago.
“The ouster of at least a dozen staffers from a counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which operates out of the Washington Field Office, was ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, according to four former officials familiar with the dismissals,” The New York Sun reported on Monday in an exclusive. “The dismissals came just days before the start of Operation Epic Fury and, separately, a deadly mass shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, by a man reportedly wearing a sweatshirt that said, ‘Property of Allah,’ beneath which was a T-shirt that was ’emblazoned with a design similar to the Iranian flag,’ CBS News reported Monday.”
The Sun reported that the CI-12 unit “focuses on media leaks, global espionage, and international threats against America emanating from countries such as Cuba and Iran, former FBI officials tell the Sun.”
“More broadly, CI squads are the lead domestic teams for investigating insider threats and foreign intelligence activity on American soil.”
The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, which took place on August 8, 2022, came months before Jack Smith was appointed Special Counsel by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. President Trump called the raid a “travesty of justice.”
During Trump’s first term as president, CI-12 in 2020 “assisted in monitoring potential retaliatory actions by Iranian-backed actors on American soil following a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport that killed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps major general Qasem Soleimani.” Trump ordered that operation, according to former FBI officials.
Recently, Director Patel expressed outrage after learning that the FBI, under Smith’s direction, had “secretly obtained his phone records, along with those of Trump aide and current White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, as part of Mr. Smith’s investigations into Mar-a-Lago as well as into January 6.”
In a statement to Reuters, Patel said: “It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now-White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight.”
Hours later, the FBI dismissed the dozen staffers and agents.
The Sun noted that those “fired were also believed to have been involved in efforts to obtain phone records of Mr. Patel and Ms. Wiles, according to reports.”
