On Saturday, President Donald Trump authorized massive military action against Iran. On Sunday, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, put FBI counterintelligence teams on high alert for threats to the homeland, after a Texas gunman killed two Americans and wounded 14 others in an attack the Bureau is investigating as a possible act of terrorism.

Not part of any FBI investigation will be at least a dozen staffers, including agents, who reportedly were fired last week for their roles in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of President Donald Trump’s possibly unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return dozens of classified documents and other items from the White House, which he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

“The ouster of at least a dozen staffers from a counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which operates out of the Washington Field Office, was ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, according to four former officials familiar with the dismissals,” The New York Sun reported on Monday in an exclusive. “The dismissals came just days before the start of Operation Epic Fury and, separately, a deadly mass shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, by a man reportedly wearing a sweatshirt that said, ‘Property of Allah,’ beneath which was a T-shirt that was ’emblazoned with a design similar to the Iranian flag,’ CBS News reported Monday.”

The Sun reported that the CI-12 unit “focuses on media leaks, global espionage, and international threats against America emanating from countries such as Cuba and Iran, former FBI officials tell the Sun.”

“More broadly, CI squads are the lead domestic teams for investigating insider threats and foreign intelligence activity on American soil.”

The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, which took place on August 8, 2022, came months before Jack Smith was appointed Special Counsel by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. President Trump called the raid a “travesty of justice.”

During Trump’s first term as president, CI-12 in 2020 “assisted in monitoring potential retaliatory actions by Iranian-backed actors on American soil following a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport that killed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps major general Qasem Soleimani.” Trump ordered that operation, according to former FBI officials.

Recently, Director Patel expressed outrage after learning that the FBI, under Smith’s direction, had “secretly obtained his phone records, along with those of Trump aide and current White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, as part of Mr. Smith’s investigations into Mar-a-Lago as well as into January 6.”

In a statement to Reuters, Patel said: “It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now-White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight.”

Hours later, the FBI dismissed the dozen staffers and agents.

The Sun noted that those “fired were also believed to have been involved in efforts to obtain phone records of Mr. Patel and Ms. Wiles, according to reports.”

Image via Reuters 

The White House was forced to fire back after a prominent conservative influencer and podcaster criticized President Donald Trump‘s various and rapidly-shifting reasons for attacking Iran in a massive and ongoing military exercise that the president and defense chief have called “war.”

Matt Walsh, who hosts his right-wing podcast on The Daily Wire and has four million followers on X, on Monday expressed his confusion with the administration’s talking points.

“So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war,” he began. “And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be.”

“The messaging on this thing is,” he said, “to put it mildly, confused.”

READ MORE: ‘Tone Deaf’: An ‘Exhausted’ Trump Ripped for Iran Speech Focused on Ballroom and Drapes

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Walsh just hours later, saying that Trump on Saturday had “released a statement laying out clear objectives to the American people for Operation Epic Fury.”

According to Leavitt, they include destroying Iran’s missiles and Navy, ensuring Iran’s proxies cannot destabilize the region or the world, stopping them from making and using IEDs, guaranteeing Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and preventing the Iranian regime from threatening America.

“Simply put,” she wrote, “the terrorist Iranian regime would not say yes to peace.”

“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has actively and intentionally facilitated the killing of Americans while chanting ‘death to America’ and funding other bloodthirsty terrorists seeking to destroy the United States and all of Western Civilization. Prior American leaders were too weak and cowardly to do anything about it. Now, President Donald J. Trump is correcting decades of cowardice and holding those responsible for the deaths of Americans accountable.”

But Politico’s White House bureau chief Dasha Burns noted that Walsh “is among many right wing voices questioning the administration’s actions in Iran.”

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“I have heard repeated warnings from Republican sources that the WH needs to do more to get MAGA on side,” she added.

Sean Davis, co-founder of the right-wing website The Federalist, reposted Walsh’s remarks and shared similar ones of his own.

“Is the goal to eliminate the Iranian regime or free the Iranian people or degrade their nuclear capability or degrade the conventional weapons capability or eliminate their regional hegemony or to cut off their oil supply to China or to help Israel or what?” Davis asked. “The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective.”

Former Trump ally and former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who months ago broke with Trump, wrote: “And just like that we are no longer a nation divided by left and right, we are now a nation divided be those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.”

READ MORE: Trump ‘Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall’ as He Workshops War Goals With Journalists: Report

Image via Reuters 

While making his first remarks to the nation from the White House about his military attack on Iran that began on Saturday, President Donald Trump came under fire for taking time to discuss his $400 million ballroom and drapes.

“We have a lot of great service members here with us, too, in this beautiful building, isn’t it? Beautiful?” Trump told the audience. “We’re adding on to the building a little bit. We’re improving the building. See that nice drape?”

“When that comes down, right now, you see a very, very deep hole, but in about a year and a half from now, you’re gonna see a very, very beautiful building. And there’s your entrance to it, right there. In fact, it looks so nice, I don’t think I’ll even, I think I’ll save money on the doors, ’cause it can’t get more beautiful than that.”

“I picked those drapes in my first term. I always liked gold, but I think we can save a lot of money. I just saved… I just saved curtains. But, uh, it will be. It will be spectacular. It’ll be the most beautiful ballroom,” he said.

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Critics blasted the president’s remarks.

“American troops are dead and Trump is on TV talking about the drapes…” remarked The Lincoln Project.

“Trump just explained about the attack on Iran that ‘I don’t get bored. There’s nothing boring about this.’ Despite that, he is now talking at some length about gold drapes and ‘the most beautiful ballroom,'” commented columnist Niall Stanage.

“In a war that’s already killed four Americans, Trump says it could last beyond 4-5 weeks because he doesn’t get ‘bored,'” observed Scripps News’ Simon Kaufman. “Moments later, he moves on from Iran and talks about ballroom renovations and drapes.”

“Trump demonstrating his mental disfigurement by bragging about his ballroom and chuckling immediately after claiming that ‘we grieve’ for 4 US soldiers killed in the war he just initiated,” wrote journalist John Harwood. “Trump does not possess empathy and does not grieve for any other person’s misfortune.”

Noting that the president sounded “exhausted and not good,” foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen observed “the difference” in Trump’s “demeanor and affect when talking about the war and then the ballroom is so different.” She also said that “it is evident the war is becoming more of a s — — than he expected.”

“It’s worth noting that Trump is putting infinitely more effort into selling his ballroom to the American people than anyone in his administration is on selling the attack on Iran,” wrote conspiracy theories expert Mike Rothschild.

“Trump started an unnecessary war in the Middle East with no real strategy, there’s already American military loss of life and this guy is obsessing over the damn drapes and his $400 million gilded ballroom project,” remarked former political commentator Tara Setmayer. “How is this making America great????”

“Bragging about his ‘beautiful ballroom’ while he’s supposed to be explaining the somber decision to go to war,” wrote The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser. “It’s one of the most politically tone deaf things I’ve ever seen from a POTUS, including this one…”

Trump: We have a lot of great service members here with us, in this beautiful building. Isn’t it beautiful? We are adding on to the building a little bit. We are improving the building. When that comes down right now, you see a very deep hole. But in about a year and a half from… pic.twitter.com/5qM0zpfkVN

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 2, 2026

READ MORE: Trump ‘Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall’ as He Workshops War Goals With Journalists: Report

Image via Reuters