Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, this week fired two agents who were identified as having worked with Jack Smith, the special counsel who led the federal investigations into Donald J. Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
The agents, both bureau veterans with excellent performance records, had been identified as associates of Mr. Smith in documents obtained by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, those people said.
Mr. Grassley has been working closely with the Trump administration to purge the F.B.I. of officials he has cast as part of a Biden-era weaponization of the agency against Mr. Trump and other Republicans. Most of the agents he has targeted had little say over the cases they were assigned to work on.
The two agents dismissed this week by Mr. Patel worked in a special unit of the bureau’s Washington field office. They had not been formally accused of misconduct, nor had they been the subject of investigations. As he has done with other firings, Mr. Patel cited Article II of the Constitution and his right to fire anyone he chooses without cause.
The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A person close to both agents asked that their names not be used because they had been the subject of threats from Trump supporters.
The firings were reported earlier by NBC News.
One of the fired agents was a decorated Iraq combat veteran several months away from retirement. The dismissal could jeopardize the agent’s government pension, according to a person who spoke to the agent.
In August, Mr. Patel summarily fired two other agents in the Washington office, Chris Meyer and Walter Giardina, who also worked with Mr. Smith.
Mr. Grassley had cited an unnamed F.B.I. whistle-blower who had contacted his office to question the impartiality of Mr. Giardina, an allegation Mr. Giardina vehemently denied.
Steven J. Jensen, the head of the Washington field office, urged Mr. Patel to protect Mr. Giardina, whom he believed to be unfairly targeted, according to a lawsuit he filed last month against Mr. Patel and other Trump appointees.
The director ignored him, and later fired Mr. Jensen.
Earlier this week, Mr. Grassley released an unclassified 2023 document showing that the F.B.I. analyzed phone records of nine Republican lawmakers as part of the investigation by Mr. Smith into Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, claimed the bureau had “tapped” his phone.
The one-page document, which Mr. Hawley had blown up into a large poster next to him, appeared to contradict that assertion, revealing only that Mr. Smith’s team had sought approval to retrieve metadata to monitor communications between Mr. Trump, his associates and lawmakers around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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