FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents and staff last week on an elite counter espionage unit that specializes in Iran, MS Now reported Monday.

The reason for their dismissals, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the firings, was that the agents had been involved in the classified documents investigation of Donald Trump.

“The firings came as Patel claimed — without evidence — that the team of FBI agents who investigated Trump’s hoarding of top-secret records at his Mar-a-Lago club had engaged in improper investigative steps,” wrote four-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Carol Leonnig.

“But his gutting of the global espionage unit, known as CI-12, also came days before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, a series of bombing strikes on Iran that killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

Among the team’s accomplishments: It exposed Monica Witt, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist and sergeant who began spying for Iran. A grand jury indicted Witt in 2019 but she had defected to Iran and remains a fugitive.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson told MS NOW that the FBI does not comment on personnel matters but maintains a “robust counterintelligence operation. … ”

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