The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, told lawmakers on Thursday that agents who had worked on an investigation of President Trump were dismissed last month because they were found to have violated the bureau’s ethics rules, a claim that is likely to be challenged in court.
The assertion came during Mr. Patel’s testimony before a House Intelligence Committee about national security threats elicited by the war in Iran. Democratic lawmakers pressed him to explain the firings of about 10 of those agents, who were also members of a counterintelligence unit that specialized in addressing terrorism threats from the Middle East.
“People were terminated for violating their ethical obligations,” he said of the agents, who had worked on the investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office.
Mr. Patel emphasized that other F.B.I. agents had scrutinized the issue and found problems in the conduct of the fired agents. “They are internal investigations conducted by the careers at the F.B.I. that highlight unethical or inappropriate conduct, and it’s up to me to make the decision,” he said.
He declined to specify what the purported violations were, claiming that there was “pending litigation” over the matter. The Mar-a-Lago agents fired last month have yet to file any lawsuits, though some agents fired earlier in Mr. Patel’s tenure have sued.
Among the F.B.I. rank and file, the firings are widely considered to be part of a rolling barrage of retribution aimed at those who had worked on two federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump after his first term in office.
The assertion by Mr. Patel that the agents were fired for justifiable reasons determined by nonpartisan, career investigators stood at odds with what the F.B.I. Agents Association has stated, which is that the agents were fired without due process.
In late February, about 10 agents, many with extensive counterintelligence experience, were dismissed by Mr. Patel over their work on the investigation into classified documents found at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The firings came as he faced days of unflattering headlines over his use of government resources, including a trip to the Olympics in Milan.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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