Washington DC - Three former senior FBI agents who were abruptly fired in August accused its director, Kash Patel, of politicizing the agency to please his superiors including President Donald Trump, in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

Among them is Brian Driscoll, who served as the acting FBI director during the first month of Trump's second term, until Patel – a close associate of the president – took over.

The three men, with a combined 60 years of law enforcement experience, described their August 8 dismissal by Patel as "illegal" and demand to be reinstated, according to the lawsuit.

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They say they were punished "for their refusals to politicize the FBI," notably by opposing the dismissal of agents whose sole offense was being considered insufficiently aligned with the priorities of the new administration, or being publicly criticized by Trump supporters.

The FBI declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

During a meeting on August 5 between Driscoll and Patel, the latter said that in order to keep his job, he had to fire everyone who had worked on criminal cases against Trump, the lawsuit says.

"The FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn't forgotten it," Patel said, according to the suit.

Trump has repeatedly blamed the criminal proceedings against him on the alleged weaponization of the Justice Department by his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden's administration.

"Our predecessors turned the Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice," Trump said during a speech at the department earlier this year. "I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back."