Investigative Group

Is Kash Patel Delivering On Trump’s Promise To Clean House At FBI?

(Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

With one year down, the Trump FBI has made significant progress weeding out agents responsible for weaponizing the agency — but there are signs there is more work to be done.

Actual firings have been fewer than some anticipated, and it remains unclear whether every individual who worked on cases against President Donald Trump has been terminated.

While 3,063 employees have left the agency since Jan. 20, 2025, at most 138 of those employees were fired, according to U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data. Most departures were retirements, at 1,872, or employees who quit, at 980.

Still, total departures in 2025 were the highest at the FBI in at least the past ten years, according to OPM data. Departures were also higher than the first calendar year of both Trump’s first administration and the Biden administration: just 1,924 employees separated from the agency in 2017 and 1,994 in 2021.

Between 2017 and 2020, a total of 9,535 employees left the agency, with departures increasing each consecutive year.

President Donald Trump called on FBI Director Kash Patel Jan. 12 to fire agents, sharing a story about how Timothy Thibault, the agent behind the Arctic Frost probe that became special counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 election case, internally circulated articles from left-wing sources while pushing for the probe to include the president.

“These FBI Agents are total Scum, in their own way no better than the insurrectionists in Portland, Minnesota, Los Angeles, etc. Kash better get them out, NOW!” Trump wrote on Truth Social responding to the Just the News story. “Radical Left Lunatics put in by the ‘Auto Pen’ [Biden] and Obama!”

Patel responded that the agents had been terminated already.

“Thank you Mr. President,” Patel wrote. “Under your leadership, this FBI found the corrupt actors and terminated their employment last year. America voted for the end of weaponized law enforcement, and that’s what we are delivering.”

Thibault left the agency in 2022 after allegations he downplayed negative information about Hunter Biden’s business activities and shared highly partisan social media posts.

The FBI did “dismantle” the CR-15 squad where Arctic Frost began, though it did not indicate how many agents were actually fired.

“Personnel action” was taken against at least three, with two fired, NBC News reported Oct. 8. Blaire Toleman, an agent in charge of CR-15 when it investigated Trump, was fired in November, according to The New York Times.

“We fired those who acted unethically, dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad, and launched an investigation,” Patel wrote Oct. 7 on X. “Transparency and accountability aren’t slogans, they’re promises kept.”

Patel forced out the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office, Aaron Tapp, whose name appeared in Arctic Frost records released by Senate Republicans, MS Now reported Oct. 3o.

“In CR-15, we worked the cases we were assigned,” Walter Giardina, who was fired in August, told the NYT. “It was not my idea to open Arctic Frost. We were detailed to Jack Smith. The supervisors came to us and said, You’re going to do this. We’re losing the ability for agents to conduct their work without fear or favor because the F.B.I. won’t protect you.”

It’s unclear how many agents involved with Arctic Frost remain at the FBI, as many names are redacted in documents released by the department. Some agents whose names show up in emails appear to still be employed by the agency. One key player from the earliest stages, Wayne Jacobs, is still in charge of the Philadelphia Bureau.

“Really well done here Tim,” Jacobs replied to Thibault’s draft opening for the Arctic Frost investigation. “Nice job by the team in producing such a strong opening.”

Later emails indicate Jacobs was “conflicted out” of overseeing the investigation.

“Due to a potential conflict and out of an abundance of caution, it has been determined SAC Wayne Jacobs, Criminal and Cyber Division, will not be overseeing any aspects of this investigation and therefore it has been decided the ADIC WFO will be the highest approving level on this EC,” Steven D’Antuono, former Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office, wrote in a March 23, 2022 email.

In response to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s questions about remaining agents, the FBI referred back to Patel’s earlier public comments.

‘Completely Overhauled’

Trump promised during his campaign to clean house at the intelligence agencies and “dismantle the deep state.”

“We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them,” Trump said in a 2023 video. “The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians or the left’s political enemies.”

Oversight Project President Mike Howell noted his organization has “publicly released names of weaponized FBI officials who were promoted by Trump Administration officials to lead FBI field offices.”

“They and others responsible for the partisan civil liberties abuses should be held accountable, not rewarded,” he told the DCNF. “A true reform effort of the FBI would yield not only massive personnel changes beyond what has already been announced, but the shuttering of non-essential and duplicative missions.”

Howell said he is “becoming increasingly worried that when the FBI returns to the wrong hands, it will be just as a powerful weapon as it was for the Biden Administration.”

“I’m hoping the Trump Administration doesn’t declare victory too early and instead commits to radical reform,” he continued.

Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson told the DCNF in November that he believes there are probably still “partisans that are burrowed in the agencies” who are not cooperating with congressional oversight. Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley similarly said in November on Newsmax there are “are a lot of people [at the DOJ] that don’t want this information [related to Arctic Frost] out because they’re probably very, very close to the liberal organizations in this town.”

People ask why I said the old FBI was a diseased temple.

This is what corruption looks like when it thinks no one is watching:

➡️ A self-awarded trophy celebrating Arctic Frost, made by FBI officials.

I disbanded CR-15 and removed the corrupt actors involved.

So when legacy… pic.twitter.com/5S6xb9XyaE

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) January 22, 2026

Some FBI agents who were fired have sued over their terminations, including 12 agents fired in July for kneeling during protests over the death of George Floyd, who was a convicted felon, in the summer of 2020.

“On June 4, 2020, our clients acted with calm and professionalism to de-escalate a potentially violent encounter with fellow Americans,” Washington Litigation Group Senior Counsel Mary Dohrmann, who is representing the agents, said in a statement. “Five years later, Kash Patel and the Trump Administration are targeting these patriotic and highly skilled FBI agents for purely partisan reasons.”

Three other fired officials, former FBI acting Director Brian Driscoll, former Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office Steven Jensen and former Special Agent in Charge of the Las Vegas field office Spencer Evans, sued in September. They claim to be targets of the administration’s “retribution for their refusals to politicize the FBI.”

Driscoll alleged that Patel told him “he had to fire the people his superiors told him to fire, because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President,” according to the lawsuit.

“Every single person that has been found to have weaponized or participated in that process has been removed from leadership positions,” Patel said in August, per CNN. “And if and when we find any others that are involved in this – as you know, this is a 37,000-person agency – we are going to take swift action, just like we have.”