Top ex-SC FBI agent alleges political bosses now run FBI, are threat to nation

Political bosses now run the FBI and blind loyalty to President Donald Trump is prized more than law enforcement expertise, according to a lawsuit filed by a former top FBI agent in South Carolina against the bureau and its current Director Kash Patel.

Steven Jensen, who served as South Carolina’s agent-in-charge from 2023 to early this year, filed his lawsuit with two other former senior agents dismissed in August from in high-level posts. The lawsuit alleges that their politically-motivated firings have “degraded the country’s national security by firing three of the FBI’s most experienced operational leaders, each of them experts in preventing terrorism and reducing violent crime.”

The other two top FBI agents, Brian Driscoll Jr. and Spencer Evans, “over the course of their remarkable careers ... prevented terrorist attacks, rescued American hostages, saved children from predators, and disabled violent street gangs,” their lawsuit said.

Jensen, Driscoll and Evans were all fired the same day, Aug. 8, despite their nearly 60 years of high-level service, the lawsuit said. Each received a one-page form letter notifying them they were being terminated immediately, the lawsuit said.

Defendants in the lawsuit are the FBI, Patel, the U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Executive Office of the President.

All defendants declined comment in response to queries about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit said that Jensen, Driscoll and Evans were fired because the White House had directed Patel to fire anyone “identified as having worked on a criminal investigation against President Donald J. Trump.”

In a private conversation before the firings, Patel told Driscoll that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop the firings because “the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,” the lawsuit said.

Patel’s firing the three top FBI agents was in marked contrast to his promise to U.S. senators during his confirmation hearing that “all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” the lawsuit said.

Involvement in Jan. 6 investigation

Trump, who falsely told supporters that the November 2020 election had been stolen from him, was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to obstruct certification of that election, among other charges. Those charges were dropped after he was elected in November 2024.

Despite Trump’s claims of a stolen election, some 60 lawsuits alleging those claims were thrown out of court in late 2020 in battleground states for lack of evidence. Trump’s own Attorney General, William Barr, told Trump there was no evidence to show massive voter fraud.

After the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, Jensen was heavily involved in investigating Trump. He led the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Section, which was responsible for coordinating all the tips coming in about the rioters, making sure they were “appropriately processed in a consistent manner” and identifying trends and sharing information about the rioters, the lawsuit said.

In 2023, Jensen was transfered to South Carolina, where he oversaw all FBI operations in the state and he received a bureau award for scoring the highest ever in leadership, the lawsuit said.

In late February or early March of this year, Jensen received a phone call from Patel, a Trump loyalist who had just been installed as FBI director.

Jensen’s rise to the top

Patel told Jensen he was in the running for a top FBI headquarters job. Patel asked Jensen about his role in the Jan. 6 investigation. Jensen told Patel his group coordinated various aspects of the investigation, the lawsuit said.

“Patel asked if Jensen had ever pushed back against Department of Justice leadership running the investigations. Jensen responded that he often advocated that investigative focus should be on those who committed acts of violence against law enforcement, damaged or stole government property,” the lawsuit said.

On March 12, Patel called Jensen and asked to him to come to Washington to be FBI Branch and Operations director — a top level post. Jensen told Patel he would be jumping over other more senior agents, and “Patel said it was not a problem and that Jensen was exactly the man he wanted for the job,” the lawsuit said.

Jensen accepted and reported to work March 17 in Washington.

Within two weeks, Patel and his number two, Dan Bongino, offered Jensen the top job of assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, an elite post because of its strategic location and involvement in numerous historic high-profile investigations.

Jensen’s new post was described by Bongino, a former podcaster and Secret Service agent, as “the fourth most powerful position in the FBI,” the lawsuit said.

Jensen accepted. On April 2, he became chief of the Washington field office.

The position is a “critical hub” for federal, state and local law enforcement coordination, the lawsuit said. Jensen oversaw “approximately 2,000 employees and task force officers executing FBI mission priority investigations ranging from domestic and international terrorism, cyber and counterintelligence, public corruption, white collar crime, transnational organized crime and violent crime within the capital region,” the lawsuit said.

Jan. 6 rioters demand Jensen’s firing

“Jensen’s promotion... set off a social media firestorm,” the lawsuit said.

“Former Jan. 6 defendants and their sympathizers immediately recognized him (Jensen) as having played a leading role in their criminal investigations, the lawsuit said.

Subscribing to President Trump’s position that the FBI investigators assigned to Jan. 6 cases were “[t]hugs”, “[t]yrants,” and “Gestapo,” “rioters and their sympathizers began aggressively posting to Patel and Bongino’s social media pages calling for Jensen’s firing or other retribution,” the lawsuit said.

Neither Patel nor Bongino had anticipated the backlash, and they “lamented” to Jensen they were having to spend a lot of time dealing with it, the lawsuit said.

“In sum, the backlash expressed that Jensen should be fired or arrested for his participation in the Jan. 6 investigations, and Patel and Bongino had made a politically poor choice by promoting him,” the lawsuit said.

Jensen continued to do his job. He regularly briefed Bongino on unsolved cases that Bongino had a high interest in, including the unsolved case of a pipe bomb found near the Capitol on Jan. 6, the unsolved leak of the Supreme Court’s decision in a key abortion case and the discovery of cocaine at the White House during the Biden administration, the lawsuit said.

During the briefings, Jensen became concerned that Bongino was focussed on getting information he could post online in his social media accounts “to change his followers’ perceptions of the FBI” at the possible expense of doing a thorough investigation of matters, the lawsuit said.

In May, Bongino told Jensen to fire an agent that Jensen knew as a “dedicated and hardworking” agent who had investigated both Republicans and Democrats over the years, the lawsuit said. Jensen told Bongino the agent was a military veteran and was entitled to certain rights that prohibited such a firing, the lawsuit said.

Jensen also told Bongino that if Bongino ordered him to fire the agent, he would document the firing in a report and make it clear that Jensen had only carried out the firing at Bongino’s direction and after Jensen had explained the firing violated the agent’s rights, the lawsuit said.

Despite Jensen’s defiance, both Patel and Bongino continued to praise him for his work, the lawsuit said.

Patel gives Jensen cigars and a “challenge coin”

On July 14, during a meeting with Patel in Patel’s office, Jensen said he had learned that Patel was planning on making public in a report to Congress the name of the agent Bongino wanted to fire. Jensen told Patel the agent’s wife was dying of Stage IV cancer and only had days to live, the lawsuit said.

The agent had worked on a case involving Trump, and Jensen told Patel that to disclose the agent’s name would “immediately trigger a torrent of online abuse and threats of violence.” For the agent and his family to deal with that while his wife was dying “seemed inexcusably cruel,” Jensen told Patel, the lawsuit said.

As Jensen got up to leave, Patel called him over and gave him a “challenge coin,” a momento leaders typically give their subordinates in government and military life, the lawsuit said. The normal challenge coin is about the size of a silver dollar. But this coin was “much larger, inscribed with ‘Director’ at the top banner of the coin, and Ka$h Patel at the bottom banner,” the lawsuit said.

“Patel told Jensen he wanted him to be one of the first recipients of his new challenge coin,” the lawsuit said.

When Jensen then noticed a collection of cigars and whisky bottles on Patel’s desk, Patel gave him three cigars, confiding that one of the cigars should not be smoked “because it was from President Trump’s inauguration,” the lawsuit said.

Jensen’s firing

In early August, Bongino publicly praised Jensen, reposting on social media an announcement highlighting the Washington field office’s role in arresting a military service member on espionage charges.

On Aug. 6, a senior FBI agent contacted Jensen and told him “trouble was coming his way” and he better resign. Jensen refused, the lawsuit said.

On Aug. 8, an agent who worked for Jensen got an email with instructions to print it out and hand it to Jensen. The email contained a one-page letter from Patel to Jensen, the lawsuit said.

“This document provides official notice that you are being summarily dismissed from your position at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and removed from the federal service, under my authority as FBI Director, effective immediately,” the letter said.

“You failed to execute and perform requested tasks, resulting in an unreasonable delay in the execution of FBI priorities.”

“Pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States, your employment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation is hereby terminated,” the lawsuit said.

“At the time of his firing, Jensen had amassed nearly 20 years of federal service and might soon have reached eligibility to retire,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit alleged Jensen and his co-plaintiffs have been unlawfully deprived of numerous employment rights and have lost pay, health insurance and retirement benefits, in addition to having their reputations and future job prospects damaged.

They seek a jury trial and a name-clearing hearing regarding false statements made about them, the lawsuit said.

Their firings were “unlawful, in part, because they were based on an incorrect perception that Plaintiffs’ involvement in legitimate law enforcement activities was born of political motives and constituted acts of political disloyalty to President Trump,” the lawsuit said.

Top former FBI agent speaks

Former FBI special agent Ron Grosse, who received the Order of the Palmetto from Gov. Henry McMaster in 2018 for his 28-year FBI career cracking white collar fraud cases in South Carolina, said it is alarming to see good FBI special agents get fired because of the cases they worked.

“In all my years, working on cases and helping on scores of arrests, I’ve never been concerned that a special agent who held different political views or personal beliefs than me would conduct themselves in any manner other than in a professional unbiased manner,” said Grosse, 66, who also served as a U.S. Army officer for seven years before joining the FBI.

“Most of the time, you are assigned to an investigation,” said Grosse.

“Special agents don’t have the luxury of choosing cases based on the political affiliation of the subjects they investigate. It’s just not relevant to seeking justice. It’s not like you can say, ‘No, boss, I really don’t want to work that one’.”

Grosse continued, “In my opinion, the disciplining or firing of an FBI agent because he or she participated in an investigation of the president is against everything the FBI stands for and likely illegal. Further, Iit’s also counterproductive and extremely harmful to the continued operation of what is considered to be the finest law enforcement agency in the world.”

The judge in the Jensen case is U.S. Judge Jia M. Cobb.

The case was filed in federal court in Washington, DC.

Jensen’s lawyers in the case are Abbe Lowell of Washington, DC, and Margaret Donovan of Connecticut.

This story was originally published October 13, 2025 at 5:30 AM.