A lawsuit filed this week alleges that the Trump administration is in violation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to release records pertaining to FBI Director Kash Patel’s reported efforts to remove agents considered disloyal to President Donald Trump.
The eleven-page complaint, filed Wednesday in Washington, D.C., was brought by Michael Feinberg, a former FBI agent with sixteen years of service. Feinberg accuses the bureau of failing to meet statutory deadlines and unlawfully withholding requested documents.
“To date, the FBI has failed to make a determination on Mr. Feinberg’s request or produce any of the requested records,” the lawsuit reads. “Mr. Feinberg now brings this suit to compel compliance with the requirements of FOIA.”
The legal action is rooted in the circumstances surrounding Feinberg’s departure from the bureau in early 2025.
In the complaint, Feinberg describes internal changes at the FBI as having begun during “the first months” of the second Trump administration, a period characterized by what he terms “sweeping personnel changes.”
“Patel, assisted by a group of employees known as the Director’s Advisory Team, specifically targeted agents he perceived as adverse to President Trump,” the lawsuit goes on. “Mr. Feinberg was one of those agents.”
As those changes took hold, Feinberg contends, it became increasingly apparent that he had come under suspicion by the bureau’s new leadership.
“Mr. Feinberg learned that he would likely lose a promotion and instead face a demotion and a polygraph test,” the lawsuit continues. “Why? Because Mr. Feinberg counted among his friends a former agent fired during President Trump’s first term.”
The individual referenced was Peter Strzok, a former FBI agent dismissed in 2018 following the public disclosure of text messages in which he was critical of Trump. According to the complaint, that personal association prompted internal inquiries and a direct phone call from the Special Agent in Charge “asking him about his friendship.”
Feinberg alleges that this phone call was initiated at the direction of Dan Bongino, who was serving at the time as deputy director of the FBI.
From the complaint, at length:
The Special Agent in Charge told Mr. Feinberg that, because of his friendship with Strzok, Mr. Feinberg could no longer expect a promotion and in fact risked demotion … A more senior employee at the FBI subsequently warned Mr. Feinberg that he would be expected to grovel and pledge his loyalty to the political leadership to stay in his position, and that he may be asked for whom he voted.
“Rather than face professional purgatory or worse, Mr. Feinberg resigned,” the lawsuit goes on.
Following his resignation, Feinberg became, by his own description, “an outspoken critic of the agency’s executive leadership” and transitioned into a role as a contributor for Lawfare, a legal blog focused on national security matters. He also engages in FBI-related advocacy through a nonprofit organization that supports current and former civil servants within the U.S. Department of Justice.
In May of this year, Feinberg submitted a FOIA request seeking “information related to his tenure at the agency and the circumstances surrounding his departure,” as noted in the lawsuit.
“This information is of significant public interest, as it sheds light on the workings of the nation’s preeminent federal law enforcement agency during the current administration,” according to the complaint.
The lawsuit further indicates that the records being sought are directly relevant to Feinberg’s ongoing journalistic and nonprofit activities.
“Mr. Feinberg now writes for a popular audience about the FBI,” the filing continues. “As part of this work, he seeks to better understand the changes to the agency implemented in this administration … he views his public speaking and writing as an effort to address and ameliorate the FBI’s shortcomings.”
The FOIA request was almost immediately complicated by an unusually extended processing estimate, Feinberg states.
“The FBI informed Mr. Feinberg that the estimated date of completion for his request would be 2,010 days,or roughly five and a half years,from when the FBI opened the request,” the lawsuit goes on. “When Mr. Feinberg asked whether the lengthy processing time had any connection to his public criticism of recent changes at the agency, the FBI refused to answer.”
Feinberg emphasizes that his familiarity with the FOIA process informed how he constructed his request.
“Mr. Feinberg took care to be as granular as possible in crafting his FOIA request given his own prior experience responding to FOIA requests while working at the FBI,” the lawsuit continues. “Mr. Feinberg constrained his requests to a narrow time period … Mr. Feinberg specifically requested unclassified or redacted materials to avoid implicating any exemptions under FOIA.”
Despite that initial communication regarding the processing timeline, Feinberg alleges that he has received no further correspondence from the bureau since.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare that the FBI has engaged in an unlawful “failure to comply with FOIA,” to affirm that Feinberg is “entitled to disclosure of the requested records,” and to issue a judicial order directing the bureau to “immediately process Mr. Feinberg’s request and to disclose responsive records.”
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