Kash Patel fired FBI agent with Iran expertise days before Tehran attack, also expelled members investigating Trump: report

FBI Director Kash Patel last week fired more than a dozen FBI agents and staffers for their role in the investigation of classified documents on Donald Trump, targeting an elite counterintelligence unit that investigates threats from foreign adversaries specifically targeting Iran, against which the United States and Israel have launched attacks.According to “MS Now”, Patel claimed without evidence that the team of FBI agents investigating Trump’s hoard of top-secret records at the Mar-a-Lago club took improper investigative measures.Patel’s dismantling of the global espionage group known as CI-12 came just days after Trump launched Operation Fury, a series of bombing raids on Iran that killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Trump ordered the bombing of Iran during his first term, and Iran subsequently carried out a series of actions on U.S. soil in an attempt to assassinate Trump and some of his aides.CI-12 investigates illegal media leaks and mishandling of classified documents and employs experienced agents trained in threat and espionage operations, with a special focus on the Middle East, including Iran and its proxies, Cuba, and a number of terrorist groups. It does not investigate threats from China or Russia, which are handled by separate units.The global espionage team helped uncover numerous counterintelligence threats from foreign governments, including Monica Vitter, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist and sergeant who began spying for Iran. Prosecutors said that while working with top-secret U.S. intelligence services, Witt converted to Islam and began espionage to aid Iran. She was indicted by a grand jury in 2019, but she defected to Iran and remains a fugitive today.The New York Sun first reported the target of the CI-12 device launched last week.On Monday, FBI insiders expressed concern that Patel might fire more CI-12 agents and staff.FBI spokesman Ben Williamson told MS NOW that the FBI would not comment on personnel matters but would maintain “a robust counterintelligence operation with personnel located across the country that achieved record results in 2025, including a 35% increase in counterintelligence arrests, the capture of six of the ten most wanted fugitives, and the foiling of multiple terrorist plots in December alone.”“Our teams remain fully engaged across the country and ready to mobilize any security assets needed to assist federal partners and state and local law enforcement,” he added.