CNN Exclusive: Fired former acting FBI chief says Patel tied job security to purging agents linked to Trump probes

A week before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, Brian Driscoll, a decorated FBI special agent, received a series of calls that alarmed him. He was being offered the No. 2 job at the FBI and was told that if he didn’t take it, a political appointee would likely get the role. Driscoll didn’t think that was an acceptable alternative, so he hesitantly agreed.

But then came the vetting process, Driscoll says, which raised more concerns.

Over the next few days, Driscoll says he was asked a series of questions by incoming Trump officials about his personal politics, including who he voted for, when he started supporting Trump, and whether he’d voted for a Democrat in recent elections.

At one point, according to Driscoll, incoming FBI Director Kash Patel told him the vetting wouldn’t be an issue so long as he wasn’t active on social media, didn’t donate to the Democratic Party, and didn’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

“It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” says Driscoll, who became acting director of the FBI for a month before Patel was confirmed in the job. Patel eventually fired Driscoll in August 2025, and Driscoll is now suing Patel and the Trump administration for wrongful termination.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Driscoll’s first since being fired last year, the former agent offers fresh details about what he says was a White House-directed purge of the FBI aimed at punishing or removing employees involved in investigations into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot as well as the probe into Trump’s possession of classified documents after his first term.

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In a meeting in Patel’s office after he had been confirmed, Patel told Driscoll that “the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,” Driscoll says.

“It was the first time he articulated it that bluntly to me,” Driscoll told CNN, adding that Patel said his own job security as the newly confirmed FBI director depended on removing agents who had worked on cases against Trump.

The Justice Department has moved to dismiss Driscoll’s case. It did not reply to CNN’s request for comment — nor did the FBI or a spokesperson for Patel.

Driscoll points to a key moment when he was asked by Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, to produce a list of all FBI employees, some 6,000 names, who had been involved in Trump investigations.

Driscoll told CNN that when he asked Bove why he needed that list of employees, the response he got was that there was “cultural rot in the FBI.”

“I was telling them this is wrong,” Driscoll says.

Driscoll says Bove told him that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wanted to see firings at the FBI similar to those that had just happened at DOJ, where more than a dozen career federal prosecutors who’d worked with former special counsel Jack Smith on cases against Trump were fired.

Driscoll says Bove then gave him a list of eight field leaders and executive assistant directors to fire who had worked on January 6 investigations. It included several employees who were close to retirement. Driscoll says he pleaded with Bove to let the individuals get to retirement so as not to compromise their pension and benefits. Driscoll received a termination memo for the agents several days later that said they could retire by a certain date or be fired.

Bove was confirmed last year to a lifetime appointment as a federal appellate judge. He did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Driscoll thought of his family, he says, and of whether he could look himself in the mirror and “say I didn’t compromise what I knew was right, and so my actions there forward were easier to a degree.”

That’s when Driscoll sent a bureau-wide email to all 38,000 FBI employees informing them of Bove’s request for additional names involved in January 6 investigations.

“As we’ve said since the moment we agreed to take on these roles, we are going to follow the law, follow FBI policy, and do what’s in the best interest of the workforce and the American people — always,” Driscoll said in the email.

In a follow-up email to FBI staff, Bove accused Driscoll of “insubordination” and wrote that, “No FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner with respect to January 6 investigations is at risk of termination or other penalties.”

Before his firing, Driscoll had been an FBI special agent for nearly two decades, earning the FBI Medal of Valor and Shield of Bravery for actions under fire. He grew up in New York and was finishing high school when 9/11 happened, and the experience prompted him to pursue a career in law enforcement, he says.

Driscoll says he felt the same kind of “helplessness” as he did on 9/11 when he got the orders to fire experienced agents. He says it was worse than getting shot at in the field.

“You take all of these highly experienced people with the perspective gained through that experience, through success and failure alike, and remove them,” Driscoll told CNN. “It’s devastating to the workforce, not just for the morale, but also the stability of the organization and the faith in it from the people inside of it and the people outside of it.”