The F.B.I. director has come under withering attack in recent days, but with Republicans backing him, the proceedings fell into a familiar partisan groove that appeared to play to his strengths.
The two agents’ accounts offer an inside view of a bureau buffeted by politics and upheaval, adding to the scrutiny of the F.B.I. director as he prepares to testify to Congress.
“We were always told that we would be taken care of and there would not be any retaliation for our assigned work,” Walter Giardina told his supervisors the day he was fired from his job as an F.B.I. agent, according to the 19-year bureau veteran.
The widespread and fast-moving campaign has already resulted in lost jobs, suspensions and internal investigations, heightening tensions online between supporters and detractors of Charlie Kirk.
Initial expressions of grief and shock were overtaken by open calls for reckoning and vengeance, as some proclaimed the country was on the brink of civil war.
A lawsuit filed by three former F.B.I. officials charges the bureau director Kash Patel dismissed them as part of “a campaign of retribution” for their “failure to demonstrate sufficient personal and political loyalty.”
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