Twelve former FBI agents who the Trump administration fired for actions taken during the 2020 protests after the murder of George Floyd are now suing the agency’s director and the administration over their terminations. The suit alleges that their firings violated the rules of the agency and represent a politicization of the FBI, punishing agents for using their best judgment to de-escalate a tense situation.
Agents defend kneeling and object to firings
The agents are suing FBI Director Kash Patel and the Trump administration after Patel fired them this year over their conduct during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, specifically due to a picture of several agents kneeling in front of demonstrators. As Blavity reported, more than a dozen FBI agents were fired by the Trump administration in September for participating in the kneeling display, despite having been previously cleared of misconduct by then-FBI Director Christopher Wray in the immediate aftermath of the incident. Nonetheless, the agents were subsequently fired by Patel, who says they had “demonstrated unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties.”
Lawyers for 12 of those fired agents, who remain anonymous in the lawsuit, allege that their firings violated FBI rules and circumvented internal agency review procedures. The lawsuit also defends the agents’ actions, saying they were unreasonably assigned to the protests despite not having significant training on “law enforcement tactics for crowd control” or sufficient equipment. Given a tense situation, the agents’ lawyers say their decision to kneel was made “for apolitical tactical reasons to defuse a volatile situation, not as an expressive political act.” By kneeling, the agents displayed “a level-headed law enforcement presence that avoided the use of unnecessary force against civilians,” according to their lawyers’ filing.
Trump administration’s attacks on the FBI
The firings of the agents came as fallout from a picture taken on June 4, 2020, when several FBI agents were deployed in Washington, D.C., to participate in crowd control amid widespread protests after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. At one point in the protests, several FBI agents posted in front of the National Archives building knelt in front of protestors, reportedly at the urging of members of the crowd. The picture of several agents kneeling went viral, and conservatives have heavily criticized the image.
The firing of the agents this year came as the Trump administration has attacked the FBI, as well as other officials and agencies that have previously been involved in investigating Trump or his allies. Former FBI Director James Comey was one of several Trump political foes who were controversially charged with criminal wrongdoing after direct pressure from President Donald Trump on Attorney General Pam Bondi. The charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, another Trump foe, were recently dismissed by a federal judge over the improper replacement of a federal prosecutor who declined to bring charges against them with a Trump loyalist who pursued the cases.
The current lawsuit over Trump’s FBI firings represents a significant pushback against the administration’s apparent retaliatory tactics against government agents and public officials. As Trump and his allies appear to use the power of the White House to settle political scores, this case will be an important test of how much latitude the president will be given as he uses his authority in questionable and possibly illegal ways.