About dozen FBI staff who worked on Trump documents case fired over 2 days

The FBI fired more employees on Thursday linked to investigations into US President Donald Trump after terminating at least ten on Wednesday, multiple sources confirmed. Overall, the rough estimate is about a dozen in total over two days, Report informs via CBS News.

The firings began after FBI Director Kash Patel alleged that former special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed his phone records as part of his investigation into Donald Trump, multiple sources said.

The agents, analysts and support staff, most of whom worked on Smith's probe into President Trump's retention of classified documents, were removed from their jobs over the past two days by Patel, who claimed that Smith had overstepped his authority by obtaining both his phone records as well as phone records for Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles while they were private citizens.

Patel had said in a statement to Reuters on Wednesday that the FBI had secretly subpoenaed his phone records "using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight." He did not describe the "flimsy pretexts."

The types of phone records at the heart of his claim are known as toll records, which contain details such as the originating and recipient numbers, date, time, and duration of calls, but not the content. It is customary for law enforcement to obtain such records through a grand jury subpoena as part of a criminal investigation to help reconstruct timelines, establish connections, and verify information.

During the Biden administration, after the National Archives had unsuccessfully sought the return of sensitive White House documents from Trump, the Justice Department seized White House files from Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, some of which were labeled "Top Secret." Trump has said the documents were in his possession lawfully and claimed publicly that, in the waning days of his presidency, he declassified some material in his possession that had been classified.