By Steve Neavling
The FBI abruptly rescinded several terminations of agents who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to keep Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter, Reuters reports.
Four agents — Jeremy Desor, Jamie Garman, Blaire Toleman, and David Geist — were told Monday they were being fired. But hours later, Toleman and Geist were informed their dismissals had been reversed, the sources said. Several other agents were also briefly terminated before the decisions were withdrawn. The FBI has not commented on the reversals.
Desor and Garman, who were fired, became the latest agents to face scrutiny after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, released more than 1,000 pages of unredacted subpoenas from Smith’s “Arctic Frost” probe. The documents included the names of FBI and Justice Department employees involved in the investigation.
Garman had been on administrative leave since Grassley released earlier records showing Smith’s team sought limited “tolling data” — basic phone metadata such as duration and location, but not contents — for several Republican lawmakers around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Grassley defended his decision to release the records.
“The public has a right to know how the government’s spending their hard-earned tax dollars, and if agents were engaged in wrongdoing they ought to be held accountable,” Grassley said. “Transparency brings accountability.”
Smith’s attorneys later sent a letter pushing back on what they called “inaccurate assertions” by senators who accused the FBI of “spying” on them. Trump was the only Republican charged in the 2020 election case.
Since January, dozens of FBI agents, prosecutors, and staff involved in Smith’s and other Jan. 6 investigations have been dismissed. Two of the bureau’s former leaders — Acting Director Brian Driscoll and the former head of the Washington Field Office — have sued FBI Director Kash Patel and the Justice Department, alleging they were fired under White House pressure to purge employees tied to Trump-related cases.
