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WASHINGTON — Three fired FBI agents sued on Tuesday to try to get their jobs back, saying in a class-action lawsuit that they were illegally punished for their participation in an investigation into President Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The federal lawsuit adds to the mounting list of court challenges to a personnel purge by FBI Director Kash Patel that over the last year has resulted in the ousters of dozens of agents, either because of their involvement in investigations related to Trump or because they were perceived as insufficiently loyal to the Republican president’s agenda.

The lawsuit in federal court in Washington was technically filed on behalf of just three agents but may have much broader implications given that its request for class-action status could open the door for agents fired since the start of the Trump administration to get their jobs back.

The three agents — Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman and Blaire Toleman — were fired last October and November in what they say was a “retribution campaign” targeting them for their work on the investigation into Trump. The agents had between eight and 14 years of “exemplary and unblemished” service in the FBI and expected to spend the remainder of their careers at the bureau but were abruptly fired without cause and without being given a chance to respond, the lawsuit says.

“Serving the American people as FBI agents was the highest honor of our lives,” they said in a statement. “We took an oath to uphold the Constitution, followed the facts wherever they led and never compromised our integrity. Our removal from federal service — without due process and based on a false perception of political bias — is a profound injustice that raises serious concerns about political interference in federal law enforcement.”

Trump’s indictment

The investigation the agents worked on culminated in a 2023 indictment from special counsel Jack Smith that accused Trump of illegally scheming to undo the results of the presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Smith ultimately abandoned that case, along with a separate one accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., after Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing Justice Department legal opinions that prohibit the federal indictments of sitting presidents.

The lawsuit notes that the firings followed the release by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of documents about the election investigation — known as Arctic Frost — that he said had come from within the FBI. Those records included files showing that Smith’s team had subpoenaed several days of phone records of some Republican lawmakers, an investigative step that angered Trump allies inside Congress.

The complaint names as defendants Patel and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, accusing them of having orchestrated the firings despite being “personally embroiled” either as witnesses or attorneys in some of the legal troubles Trump has faced.

Patel, for instance, was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and had his phone records subpoenaed, while Bondi was part of the legal team that represented Trump at his first impeachment trial, which resulted in his acquittal.

“And now, by virtue of presidential appointment to the pinnacle of federal law enforcement, Defendants are abusing their positions to claim victories that eluded them on the merits,” the lawsuit states.

Spokespeople for the FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. Patel and Bondi have said the fired agents and prosecutors who worked on Smith’s team were responsible for weaponizing federal law enforcement, a claim that was also asserted in their termination letters but that the plaintiffs call defamatory and baseless.

Fired agents call for ‘fundamental constitutional protections’

Dan Eisenberg, a lawyer for the agents, said in a statement that his clients were fired without any investigation, notice of charges or chance to be heard.

“This lawsuit seeks to reaffirm fundamental constitutional protections for FBI employees, ensuring they can perform their duties without fear or favor. We all benefit when law enforcement officers’ only loyalty is to facts and the truth,” said Eisenberg, who is with the firm of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.

The lawsuit asks for the agents to be reinstated to their positions and for a court declaration affirming that their rights had been violated. It also seeks to represent a class of at least 50 agents who have been terminated since Jan. 20, 2025, or will be. Those agents also stand to recover their jobs in the event the case is successful and the requested class-action status is granted.

Others have been fired too

Other fired employees who have sued include agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in 2020; an agent trainee who displayed an LGBTQ+ flag at his workspace; and a group of senior officials, including the former acting director of the FBI, who were terminated last summer.

The firings have continued, with Patel last month pushing out a group of agents in the Washington field office who had been involved in investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents. Trump has insisted he was entitled to keep the documents when he left the White House and has claimed without evidence that he had declassified them.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday stormed out of a closed-door briefing on the Jeffrey Epstein files by Justice Department leaders, and said they would push to force Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to answer questions under oath about the case that has plagued the Trump administration.

Bondi and Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche went to Capitol Hill to try to quell bipartisan frustration over the Justice Department’s handling of millions of files related to Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation.

But less than an hour into the briefing, Democrats walked out in protest of the arrangement and said they would press to enforce a subpoena for Bondi to appear for a sworn deposition next month.

“We want her under oath because we do not trust her,” said Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost.

Asked by reporters after the briefing whether she would comply with the subpoena, Bondi said, “I made it crystal clear I will follow the law.” She also defended the department’s handling of the Epstein files, saying officials are proud of their work to release millions of documents to the public.

The committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer, accused Democrats of political grandstanding.

“This for us, for the Republicans, it’s about getting answers,” Comer said after the briefing. “For the Democrats, it’s a political game, and they just demonstrated that today. There’s no reason for them to walk out and clutch their pearls and act like they were offended and outraged.”

Justice Department leaders had hoped the release of documents tied to the disgraced financier would put an end to a political saga that has dogged the president’s second term, but the agency remains consumed by questions and criticism over Epstein’s case and its management of the files. Bondi has accused Democrats of using the furor over the documents to distract from Trump’s political successes, even though some of the most vocal criticism has come from members of the president’s own party.

Five Republicans on the committee voted with Democrats to support the subpoena for Bondi to appear for a deposition on April 14. Lawmakers have accused the Justice Department of withholding too many files and criticized the agency for haphazard redactions that exposed intimate details about victims.

The Justice Department has called the subpoena “completely unnecessary,” noting that members of Congress have been invited to view unredacted files at the Justice Department and that department leaders have made themselves available to answer questions from lawmakers.

The department has sought to assure lawmakers and the public that there has been no effort to shield President Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago after an earlier friendship, or any other high-profile figures close to Epstein from potential embarrassment. Justice Department leaders have also rejected suggestions that they have ignored victims and insist that while there is no evidence in the files to prosecute anyone else, they remain committed to investigating should new information come forward.

“I’m not trying to defend Epstein — I’m not,” Blanche said in an interview this week with Katie Miller, who is married to top Trump advisor Stephen Miller. “I do defend the work that this department is doing today, right now, which is going after every single perpetrator anyway, and if there is a narrative that exists that we are ignoring Epstein victims, that is false.”

The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, 64, was convicted in December 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role over a decade in sexually exploiting and abusing underage girls with Epstein.

Criminal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting.

After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. The Justice Department in January said it was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

Richer and Groves write for the Associated Press.

A group of attorneys general are taking legal action to block Nexstar Media Group’s proposed $6.2-billion acquisition of Tegna’s TV stations, calling the deal bad for consumer cable bills and local journalism.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento says the proposed deal by eight state law enforcers, including California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, claims the proposed deal will give Nexstar too much control of local TV stations, ultimately hurting consumers by diminishing the diversity of news sources in their markets.

Bonta said in a statement that the deal will cause “irreparable harm to local news and consumers who rely on their reporting as a critical source of information.” The plaintiffs also include state attorneys general in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia.

The Irving, Texas-based Nexstar is currently the largest station owner in the U.S., with 164 outlets including KTLA in Los Angeles. If the merger with Tegna succeeds, Nexstar would have 265 TV stations reaching 80% of the U.S. and multiple outlets in a number of markets.

The suit also claims that the merger would give Nexstar too much leverage in negotiating fees from pay-TV providers that carry their stations. Higher fees paid to Nexstar would be passed along to consumers in their cable and satellite bills, the lawsuit asserts.

Most of Nexstar’s stations are affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, all of which carry NFL football, the highest-rated programming on TV by a wide margin. Disputes over carriage fees between station owners and pay-TV providers often result in blackouts and service interruptions to consumers.

DirecTV, which serves around 11 million pay-TV subscribers in the U.S., filed a similar lawsuit in the same court on Thursday, claiming the Nexstar deal will “irreparably drive up consumer costs, reduce local competition, shutter local newsrooms, and increase both the frequency and duration of blackouts of key local teams and network programming.”

A Nexstar representative did not respond to a request to comment.

President Trump has said he favors Nexstar’s proposed deal. But every major TV station owner believes consolidation in the TV station business is necessary to thrive going forward as they battle to compete with streaming video platforms that have eaten away at their audience share.

The companies say they are at a disadvantage in competing with tech companies by being limited to owning stations in 39% of the U.S., a cap that was set in 2003.

Nexstar recently cut veteran anchors and on-air reporters from its stations in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Further reductions in local TV newsrooms would occur if Nexstar succeeds in acquiring Tegna, which would likely mean consolidation of local newsrooms in which it owns more than one station.

WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi was subpoenaed Tuesday to answer questions from Congress about the Justice Department’s sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and the agency’s handling of millions of files related to the disgraced financier.

Bondi was ordered to appear for a deposition on April 14 by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform after a vote earlier this month that five Republicans supported.

The Justice Department’s failure to fend off the subpoena from the Republican-led committee underscores widespread discontent among President Trump’s own base over Bondi’s management of the review and release of a trove of documents from the criminal investigation into Epstein.

“The Committee has questions regarding the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and his associates and its compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman, said in a letter to Bondi.

“As Attorney General, you are directly responsible for overseeing the Department’s collection, review, and determinations regarding the release of files pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the Committee therefore believes that you possess valuable insight into these efforts,” he wrote.

The department on Tuesday called the subpoena “completely unnecessary.” Bondi and Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche were expected to provide a private briefing Wednesday to members of the committee.

“Lawmakers have been invited to view the unredacted files for themselves at the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General has always made herself available to speak directly with members of Congress,” the department said in a statement. The agency said it looks forward to “continuing to provide policymakers with the facts.”

The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents and over-redacting files. In other cases, victims have slammed the department for sloppy redactions that revealed their sensitive information.

The Justice Department has fiercely defended its handling of the Epstein files, saying it worked as quickly and diligently as possible to review and release millions of documents required under the law. The department has denied any accusations that it used redactions to protect certain people or improperly withheld certain materials. And it has said it immediately worked to fix any redaction errors raised by victims.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday released additional Jeffrey Epstein files involving uncorroborated accusations made by a woman against President Trump that the department said had been mistakenly withheld during an earlier review.

The department said last week that it was working to determine if any records were improperly withheld after several news organizations reported that the massive tranche of records that had been made public didn’t include some files documenting a series of interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who made an allegation against Trump.

The accuser was interviewed by the FBI four times as it sought to assess her account but a summary of only one of those interviews had been included in the publicly released files.

On Thursday, the department said those files had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative,” and therefore were inadvertently not published along with other investigative documents related to the disgraced financier, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.

“As we have consistently done, if any member of the public reported concerns with information in the library, the Department would review, make any corrections, and republish online,” the department said in a post on X.

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The department noted in January that some of the documents contain “untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”

The new disclosures come as Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi faces continued turmoil over the department’s handling of the files released under a law passed by Congress after months of public and political pressure. Five Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined Democrats in voting Wednesday to subpoena Bondi, demanding that she answer questions under oath in a sign of mounting frustration among members of the president’s own party.

The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents or over-redacting files, or in some cases, not redacting enough. In some cases, the department inadvertently released nude photos showing the faces of potential victims as well as names, email addresses and other identifying information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured.

Department officials have defended their handling of the files, saying they took pains to release the files as quickly as possible under the law while also protecting victims. Department officials have said errors were inevitable given the volume of the materials, the number of lawyers viewing the files and the speed at which the department had to release them. The department has said it’s entitled to withhold records that exposed potential abuse victims, were duplicates or protected by legal privileges, or related to an ongoing criminal investigation.

Some of the new records published Thursday pertained to a woman who contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein’s 2019 arrest and claimed that a man named “Jeff” living in Hilton Head, South Carolina, had raped her there in the 1980s when she was around 13 years old. The woman told the agents she didn’t know the man’s identity at the time, but decades later concluded he was Jeffrey Epstein when a friend texted her his photo from a news story.

In a follow-up interview a month later, the woman added a host of other claims, including that Epstein had schemed to have her mother sent to prison, beaten her, arranged sexual encounters with other men and once flew her to either New Jersey or New York, where she claimed to have bitten Trump after he tried to sexually assault her.

Agents spoke with the woman two more times, at one point asking her to provide more detail on her supposed interactions with Trump, but reported that she declined to answer additional questions and broke off contact. There’s no indication that Epstein ever lived in South Carolina and it was unclear whether Trump and Epstein knew each other during the time period involved.

The woman’s report was one of a number of uncorroborated, sometimes fantastical, reports that federal agents received from members of the public alleging misconduct by Trump and other famous people in the months and years after Epstein’s arrest.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.