Lawsuit Exposes an FBI in Crisis

Summary

Bulwark Takes: "Lawsuit Exposes an FBI in Crisis"

Host: Tim Miller (and team)
Date: September 11, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Tim Miller delivers a rapid-fire, incisive breakdown of a blockbuster lawsuit filed by three former FBI officials against the Bureau, singling out Cash Patel and Dan Bongino for wrongful termination and incompetence. The episode is framed by a larger context: recent high-profile FBI failures—most notably, the response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and a botched investigation in Utah—highlighting a Federal Bureau of Investigation in disarray and under partisan siege.

Through detailed reporting and first-hand quotes, Miller lays out the lawsuit’s depiction of a politicized, demoralized FBI, where expertise is purged in favor of political loyalty, social media engagement is prioritized over national security, and agents are subject to intimidation and retribution for their perceived lack of fealty to Trump-aligned leadership.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Recent Crisis and FBI Incompetence

• Contextual Backdrop:
  • The episode begins with the Kirk assassination fallout and the FBI’s embarrassing back-and-forth on a Utah suspect, highlighting operational mishaps under current leadership (00:01–01:57).
    • “At minimum, Cash Patel has absolutely bungled that. Publicly posting about having a suspect, then having to post again about how they had released the suspect. Humiliating.” — Tim Miller [00:36]
  • Ominous note about the firing of Utah’s regional FBI agent, possibly linked to anti-DEI motives (01:20).
  • Sets up the lawsuit as a critical window into deeper, institutionalized failures.

2. The Lawsuit: Who, What, and Why

• Lawsuit Details:

  • Filed by Brian Driscoll (“The Drizz”), Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans, all respected, career Bureau officials ousted in a wave of politically-motivated purges (03:16–04:07).
  • Cash Patel named as central antagonist, with Dan Bongino implicated for self-serving, performative leadership.
  • The suit’s core allegation: replacing experience and nonpartisanship with “political loyalty tests” and social media-obsessed figureheads has endangered U.S. security (04:25–05:38).

• A Culture of Retribution:

  • Driscoll’s crime? Maintaining a personal friendship with Peter Strzok, leading to his effective expulsion (02:29–03:16).
  • “It’s not exactly the stuff of a deep state conspiracy.” — Mike Feinberg [02:53]

3. Political Loyalty Supplanting Professionalism

• Political Purges:

  • White House pressure, especially from Stephen Miller and DOJ transition point-man Paul Ingrassia, to replace seasoned staff with Trump loyalists—often grossly unqualified (06:48–08:03).
    • “A political loyalty test in order to have a job protecting Americans.” — Tim Miller [07:25]

• Perverse Vetting Criteria:

  • Prospective top officials asked if they had “donated to the Democratic Party,” “voted for Kamala Harris in 2024,” or maintained a low profile on social media. These now serve as employment litmus tests (07:25).

• Summary Firings and Lists:

  • Emil Bove and Stephen Miller pressing for lists of all agents who investigated the January 6th attack—“not even political opponents, just people who were doing their job that day” (09:00–09:24).

4. Culture of Insecurity and Pettiness

• Bureaucratic Drama:

  • White House mishap makes Driscoll acting director “by accident,” then subjected to relentless pressure to fire staff without due cause (08:58–09:46).
  • Frivolous grievances like a parody video (Batman vs Bane) cited as grounds for professional vendettas (09:00–10:12).
    • “These guys are also babies at Sport Nau… Driscoll is like, dude, I have a real fucking job to do, all right? I didn’t make the video.” — Tim Miller [09:49–10:09]

• Social Media Obsession:

  • Dan Bongino, as Deputy FBI Director, is portrayed as more focused on cultivating his online persona than protecting national security (10:12–11:20).

5. Collateral Damage: Purged Agents and Eroded Professionalism

• Casualties of MAGA Purge:

  • Decorated agents like Walter Giardina and Chris Meyer are hounded by online trolls, targeted for removal by unqualified White House aides (11:35–12:26).
    • “They weren’t frequent guests on Bannon’s war room. Like, these are people that actually serve the country and want to protect the country… pushed out because some fucking trolls on the Internet thought that they might not be fully supportive of Mr. Trump’s authoritarian takeover.” — Tim Miller [12:07–12:22]

• Leadership’s Callousness Revealed:

  • Giardina, caring for his dying wife, dismissed after a cold, performative gesture from Cash Patel (13:02–13:09).
    • “Cash’s response: handed him a challenge coin with the S replaced by a money sign, and three cigars… ‘you’re crushing it, you can get out of here.’ Fired Giardina right after.” — Tim Miller [13:02]

6. Concluding Rebuke & Stakes

• Grave Warnings:
  • The episode ends with a call to recognize the peril in exchanging professionalism for political loyalty throughout the nation’s most crucial law enforcement agency.
    • “It is sick what these people are doing at the FBI. It is absolutely sick. And it is going to lead to a more dangerous country… People should be outraged by the way that our federal police force is being run right now.” — Tim Miller [13:41–13:52]

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Operational Failure:
  “At minimum, Cash Patel has absolutely bungled that… Humiliating.” — Tim Miller [00:36]
• On Internal Purges:
  “That is the key point here. The FBI is not a place where you put in your partisan friends. It’s not a spoil system part of the federal government.” — Tim Miller [04:25]
• On the New Vetting Reality:
  “You have to pass a political loyalty test in order to have a job protecting Americans.” — Tim Miller [07:25]
• On Social Media Over Policing:
  “Bongino was spending more time creating content for his social media pages than on actual FBI investigations.” — Tim Miller [10:12]
• On the Personal Toll:
  “[Giardina was] caring for his dying wife, and [Cash Patel] fired him right after.” — Tim Miller [13:02]
• On the Broader Consequence:
  “What they’re doing is targeting and snuffing out people who do care about the country… because they’re perceived foes of the MAGA agenda, because they were doing their job investigating criminals on January 6.” — Tim Miller [13:15]

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• FBI bungles response to Kirk assassination, Utah shooting: [00:01–01:57]
• Lawsuit context and details, Driscoll's story: [02:02–03:16]
• Political loyalty tests and internal purges: [04:07–07:56]
• Summary firings, vetting by partisan loyalty: [08:58–09:46]
• Bongino’s focus on social media over investigations: [10:12–11:22]
• Giardina and Meyer targeted, White House interference in staffing: [11:35–12:26]
• Callous firing of Giardina by Cash Patel: [13:02–13:09]
• Final warnings and outrage: [13:41–14:01]

---

Tone & Style

Tim Miller delivers his analysis with characteristic urgency and bluntness, punctuating legal and political details with pointed humor and exasperation. The language is unfiltered (“It is sick what these people are doing…”), sometimes profane, and always direct, capturing the Bulwark’s signature no-nonsense, center-right critique of MAGA-era excess.

---

For listeners seeking a sober account of how institutional expertise is being chipped away within America’s top law enforcement agency—and why it matters for democracy—this episode is essential, provocative listening.

Transcript

[A]

Hey everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here.

[B]

Yesterday I taped the upcoming video about a lawsuit being filed by three former FBI officials targeting the bureau and particularly naming Cash Patel and Dan Bongino as incompetent, as wrongly firing them, as caring more about their social media and, you know, their political revenge tour than about protecting the country. And given what we've seen from Cash and from the FBI since this assassination of Charlie Kirk, I feel like the testimony in that lawsuit is more important than ever. So I want to put the video out but just kind of note that I taped it before the sort of ongoing news story about the FBI's response to the shooting in Utah because at minimum, Cash Patel has absolutely bungled that. Publicly posting about having a suspect and then having to post again about how they had released the suspect. Humiliating. And also news that that the agent in the Utah region was supposed to be in charge of. Of that area had been fired for reasons unknown. Some. Some suspicions that it was an anti DEI firing because he was Muslim. So more to be found out on that. But I think the internal story of what is happening at the FBI is going to continue to be a major, major news item for us to follow and major risk for the country. And I think that we are seeing a little bit of that incompetence in real time in the response from the Bureau to, to the Kirk assassination. So stick around for more details from this lawsuit because it is a fucking doozy. And we'll be back for more on this as as news develops out of Utah.

[A]

Hey everybody, Tim O from the Bulwark here. We've got a breaking news story from the New York Times about a lawsuit.

[B]

From three former top FBI officials targeting Cash Patel and targeting this administration on the grounds of unlawful removal from their jobs. I want to shout out Alan Fiorer and Glenn Thrush at the Times of the scoop on this. We'll put the link to their story at the bottom. We've had Glenn on on the channel a few times. I'm sure we'll have him back soon.

[A]

Is a story that we've been following for a while and we'd Mike Feinberg.

[B]

On former FBI official who resigned but was essentially pushed out over the fact that he hung out with Peter Strzok. Basically Peter Strzok who was involved in the investigation against Trump and the in.

[A]

The first Russia investigations.

[C]

It's come to his attention that I have remained friends and remained in contact with Pete Struck since he left the bureau. And there's nothing false in that. It's absolutely true. You know, he and his wife were a guest at my wedding. We hang out quite a bit. We talk all the time, as I said in the piece, largely about the food scene in various cities and mostly about different bands. You know, our, our friendship kicked off when we discovered we were both huge Smiths fans. It's not exactly the stuff of a deep state conspiracy.

[A]

And that same, you know, campaign of targeting and intimidation and retribution inside the bureau is what underlines this, this, this legal filing. So the former officials who brought the suit, Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen and Spencer Evans Driscoll, we've been talking about here quite a bit, he's known as the Drizz, very well respected inside the bureau. Ended up becoming the de facto director of the bureau after Christopher Wray resigned like a coward rather than forcing Donald Trump to fire him. So the Drizz ends up kind of.

[B]

Being the de facto head of the.

[A]

Bureau for a little while and receives very positive reviews from everybody. As somebody who just like thrust into this job focused on doing the work, focused on protecting agents who are just doing their jobs, you know, not being political.

[B]

And that unwillingness to essentially to act on Donald Trump's campaign of retribution inside the FBI is what ends up getting him removed.

[A]

According to the suit. In the suit they accused Mr. Patel of dismissing them. It's the first time I've ever called.

[B]

Cash Mr. Patel appreciate the formality of the New York Times.

[A]

They accused cash money sign of dismissing them as part of a campaign of retribution because they didn't demonstrate sufficient political loyalty. Nari Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American. And I want to get into the details of the, of the ways in which he politicized the FBI. She targeted this guys. But that is the key point here. The FBI is not a place where you, you put in your partisan friends. It's not a spoil system part of the federal government. Okay? We want agents who have expertise and experience going after bad guys. That's the job of the FBI. Okay that we need that for us, for the party that is. Oh, we're back in the blue. Oh, oh, oh, we're law and order. Oh, you the left is. Is putting us at risk. What's putting us more at risk? Okay, Because I think it is putting in political stooges in front of the, at the head of the FBI and getting rid of people who have actual expertise in, in going after child sex predators, looking into Chinese espionage and all the other things.

[B]

That the FBI does on our behalf.

[A]

You know, we talked about this with that shooting in Minnesota. I'm not blaming Kash Patel on that. But all, all I'm saying is that the person. There's like some confusion over their gender.

[B]

Pronouns at one point were trans. They regretted it. But whatever.

[A]

The person that shut up that church, okay, told people they'd shoot up that church. They posted it onto social media. There were known threats. And this administration is de emphasizing that from firing people whose job it is to look after domestic terror threats, refusing to call out white supremacist domestic terror when it happens. That was in the case of Minnesota. But they want to deemphasize any efforts to look at potential radicalization within the country to instead focus only on immigration and to put fucking C list podcast hosts in charge of massive portfolios of the Bureau of Investigation as repayment for.

[B]

Being nice to Mr. Trump.

[A]

That's what they're doing and it is putting people at risk. And they're right about this going through the lawsuit even more at the time writes the suit describes previously unreported accounts about key Trump appointees including Cash, Stephen.

[B]

Miller and now soon to be Judge Emil Bove.

[A]

And with regards to Miller and Bove, Miller is at the center of the suit. He is not Senate confirmed, as they point out, but he's making demands of those officials at the FBI. Emil Beauvais. Emil Bove stated that he was receiving pressure from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to see symmetrical action.

[B]

At the FBI has been happening at.

[A]

The doj, made clear that he and Miller wanted to see personnel action like reassignment, removals and terminations at the FBI. So you know, that's something we've known that's been happening. But there it is right there in the lawsuit. They're pushing out people just based on their politics based fact that they were.

[B]

Involved in investigations into Trump.

[A]

I want to pull out a couple of the other examples mentioned in the, in the suit and in the Times articles. The Drizz described his initial vetting interview with Kash Patel. He was informed that he could have a top position if he was, quote, not prolific on social media, did not donate to Democratic Party and did not vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. So that's it. A job qualification to be a leader at the FBI. Now in this administration you have to. There's a political loyalty test in order to have a job protecting Americans.

[B]

Something that's good to know.

[A]

Driscoll had then at a second interview with Paul Ingrassia who was the White House DOJ transition liaison in Gracia, is a totally unqualified lunatic. He makes Cash Patel look, you know, downright accomplished. Ingracia has palled around with white nationalists. He advances the most insane arguments on behalf of Trump on social media. So he has been prolific. Driscoll, the fucking career professional FBI official, had to go interview with this Twitter troll, with this total zero Twitter troll embarrassing somebody that you wouldn't hire to coach your kid's soccer team. A top person at the bureau has to interview with him. During that interview in Gracia asked Driscoll whether he supported Mr. Trump, what he thought about DEI. The Drizz ends up, as I mentioned, at the top, getting kind of put into this job by accident. He had been applying for the number two job, and it was going to be a different FBI agent that was named as acting director. But there was a mistake. The White House discriminated as a clerical error, where they issued a public statement giving Driscoll the top job.

[B]

Trump and his team didn't want to.

[A]

Be embarrassed and admit that to fixing the screw up. So they told Mr. Driscoll they could keep the top job. Driscoll said okay, as long as he wouldn't be called upon to fire anyone without due process. But almost immediately, they began demanding him to do that. Bove brought up the pressure he was receiving from Miller to conduct summary firings of agents who had been involved in investigations against Trump. One of his most insistent demands was that they create a list of all the agents that had worked on the vast investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. So they wanted a list of anybody. Not who. Not even political opponents, just people who were doing their job that day and were part of the investigation against the people that stormed the Capitol. These guys are also babies at Sport Nau. In this lawsuit, Bove tells Driscoll that he was pissed at him in part because there were some parody that were being passed around FBI employees where Bobby was portrayed as the Batman villain Bane, while Driscoll was portrayed as Batman. Driscoll is like, dude, I have a real fucking job to do, all right? I didn't make the video. I. I don't know who did it. Like, why are you being such a little bitch?

[B]

He didn't use that word. I'm just summarizing essentially where.

[A]

Where Driscoll was. And yet this is another reason that gets him on the wrong side of these guys. And then Driscoll points out what happens with Dan Bongino comes in Bungino comes in, obviously he's being deputy FBI director. The critique of him is that he has a, quote, intense focus on increasing online engagement of his social media profiles. He's worried his followers have a negative perception of the FBI because he's been advancing deep state conspiracies his whole career. People that worked under him were worried that Bongino was spending more time creating content for his social media pages than on actual FBI investigations. These are the, I mean, this is, this is all we, all they are who we thought they were. But this is what's happening at the, at the top level of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the organization that's job it is to protect us from domestic terrorists, to go after people that are trafficking kids, dealing drugs across state lines like terrorism. The people that are in charge of this care more about firing those who hurt Donald Trump's fifis and making sure that their social media pages are getting good engagement than they care about doing.

[B]

Their jobs on behalf of the American people.

[A]

It is. The whole thing is pathetic. A couple other people who got pushed out that were not a party of the lawsuit. One was Walter Giardina. I've mentioned him before on here, his story. He's one whose wife was dying when all this was going on. And then there's Chris Meyer, an agent.

[B]

Who was Cash Patel's pilot.

[A]

Both of them were targeted online by far right critics, by MAGA critics.

[B]

And like, these tweets about these random.

[A]

Agents had been sent to top White House aides.

[B]

And so the White House aides had.

[A]

Told FBI officials then to have these guys fired again. It's crazy. I mean, in the filing, these guys discussed their colleagues Gerardina and Meyer, saying that they were decorated combat veterans. They had decades of investigative experience, they.

[B]

Had a respect for the institution, a disdain for self promotion. Nobody who knew who they were.

[A]

They weren't, you know, frequent guests on Bannon's war room. Like, these are people that actually serve the country and want to protect the country. Anonymous people, folks out there, exactly the type of people you want in government. They're getting pushed out because some fucking trolls on the Internet thought that they.

[B]

Might not be fully supportive of Mr. Trump's authoritarian takeover.

[A]

In early July, Jensen, again, one of the three folks filing this lawsuit. Jensen goes to Cash's office to urge him to protect Giardina's job. He says he's been unfairly targeted. He said it would be, quote, inexcusably cruel to add to the burden of him because he's caring for his dying.

[B]

Wife, and he's done his job well.

[A]

Cash's response to Jensen when that happened was to hand him a challenge coin that had his name on it with the S replaced by a money sign, and then give him three cigars. Told him, you're crushing it, and you can get out of here.

[B]

I'll take. I'll take it under advisement. He fired Giardina right after. So there you go.

[A]

That's who we're dealing with. We're dealing with small men who don't care at all about the country, who care about putting their fucking name and.

[B]

Image on random coins to hand out to people who care about their social media engagement. And what they're doing is targeting and snuffing out people who do care about the country, who do care about their jobs, care about their families, care about our families, who want to protect us. And they're getting pushed out because they're being slandered, because they're perceived foes of the MAGA agenda, because they were doing their job investigating criminals on January 6.

[A]

It is sick what these people are doing at the FBI. It is absolutely sick.

[B]

And it is going to lead to a more dangerous country. And I think that both on the.

[A]

Merits and on the politics of this.

[B]

People should be outraged by the way that our federal police force is being run right now.

[A]

So we'll be back for much more.

[B]

We'll see you soon.