Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published damning documents last month detailing how the Biden FBI not only secretly obtained the private phone records of numerous Republican lawmakers but subpoenaed records for over 400 Republican individuals and entities as part of what the Iowa senator called a “fishing expedition.”
Grassley noted last week that Operation Arctic Frost, the “fishing expedition” in question, “was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.”
‘The road to reform is long.’
Amid the backlash over the latest insights into the Biden administration’s yearslong apparent campaign to criminalize its political opponents, the FBI began canning some of the agents involved in Arctic Frost whose names appeared in the newly released documents. While the bureau handed out numerous pink slips in recent days, it evidently had issues making them stick.
Last week, the FBI reportedly fired at least two agents who had worked on the Arctic Frost investigation.
CNN originally reported that Aaron Tapp, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office who previously had an oversight role on Arctic Frost, was among those fired, though it has since indicated that he was forced into retiring.
RELATED: Bondi exposes ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ Arctic Frost action against Trump by Biden admin
Jack Smith. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
On Monday, the bureau allegedly canned another four agents who worked on Smith’s team: Jeremy Desor; Blaire Toleman, a Chicago-based agent who once led a now-defunct public corruption squad; David Geist, a former assistant special agent in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office; and Jamie Garman, an agent who was placed on administrative leave early last month, reported Reuters.
“The public has a right to know how the government’s spending their hard-earned tax dollars, and if agents were engaged in wrongdoing they ought to be held accountable,” Sen. Grassley said in a statement. “Transparency brings accountability.”
Multiple sources told Reuters that at least two of the terminations — Toleman’s and Geist’s — were rescinded later in the day, along with a number of other terminations that allegedly took place on Monday.
Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had intervened on Monday to reverse the firings of least four fired FBI agents. One source said she weighed in on account of the agents’ involvement in the Trump administration’s crackdown on criminality in the national capital.
This last-minute rescue was, however, apparently as short-lived as the initial terminations. The FBI reportedly fired the agents again on Tuesday.
It’s presently unclear how many agents were officially canned.
The FBI and Pirro’s office did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.
The FBI Agents Association complained in a statement on Tuesday that “the actions yesterday — in which FBI Special Agents were terminated and then reinstated shortly after — highlight the chaos that occurs when long-standing policies and processes are ignored. An Agent simply being assigned to an investigation and conducting it appropriately within the law should never be grounds for termination.”
“Director Patel has disregarded the law and launched a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution,” added the group.
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, “Individual accountability for participation in or oversight of weaponized operations such as Arctic Frost should absolutely be imposed. I’m glad some have been fired for this, and I am sure they will sue and be well represented.”
“The personnel laws are very restrictive to accountability, which certainly makes accountability harder, especially when considering termination versus reassignment,” continued Howell. “That being said, you can’t have weaponized individuals still at the FBI, that just should not ever be an acceptable option. The road to reform is long.”
Howell added, “I’d like to see more thought given to systemic reform at the FBI so it can’t operate institutionally as it did during the Biden years especially. Whack-a-mole on weaponized individuals is tough work, but the FBI and government should also mitigate the potential for them to abuse power again.”
Editor’s note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.
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