WASHINGTON (AP) — Twelve former FBI agents who were fired after kneeling during 2020 racial justice protests in Washington filed a lawsuit Monday seeking reinstatement, saying their actions were an attempt to de-escalate a volatile situation and were not a political gesture.
The agents said in the lawsuit that they were fired by director Kash Patel in September because they were deemed to have no political ties to President Donald Trump. But they said their decision to kneel on June 4, 2020, days after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, was misconstrued as political expression.
The lawsuit alleges the agents were assigned to patrol the nation’s capital during the civil unrest sparked by Floyd’s death. Lacking protective gear or extensive crowd control training, the agents were vastly outnumbered by the hostile crowd they encountered and decided to kneel on the ground in hopes of de-escalating the situation, the lawsuit alleges. The tactic worked — the crowd dispersed, no shots were fired, and the agents “saved American lives” that day, the lawsuit says.
“Plaintiffs were performing their duties as FBI agents by taking reasonable de-escalation measures to prevent a potentially deadly confrontation with an American citizen: a Washington Massacre comparable to the Boston Massacre of 1770,” the lawsuit states.
The FBI declined to comment Monday.
The lawsuit in federal court in Washington is the latest court challenge to a purge that has roiled the FBI and targeted top executives and front-line agents as Patel works to reshape the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. In addition to the agents who knelt, other employees who have been fired in recent months have been involved in investigations involving Trump or his allies, including one case after he displayed an LGBTQ+ flag in the workplace.
After photos emerged of agents kneeling, the FBI conducted an internal review and the then-deputy director determined the agents were not politically motivated and should not be punished. The Justice Department’s inspector general came to similar conclusions and accused the department of placing agents in dangerous situations that day, the lawsuit said.
It wasn’t until Patel took over the bureau in February that the FBI took a different stance.
Last spring, several kneeling agents were removed from their posts, a new disciplinary investigation was launched, and the agents were interviewed about their conduct. The internal process was still pending in September when agents received terse letters informing them that they were fired due to “unprofessional conduct and lack of impartiality in the performance of their duties, which resulted in the political weaponization of the government.”
“Defendants’ dismissal of Plaintiffs was a partisan retaliation against FBI employees whom they believed were sympathetic to President Trump’s political opponents,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants took immediate action to avoid the creation of any further administrative records that would expose their actions as vindictive and unfair.”
The plaintiff was one of 22 agents from various squads across Washington who were deployed to downtown Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2020, to demonstrate visible law enforcement procedures during protests in the nation’s capital and across the country.
The agents were pushed into the chaotic scene, the lawsuit says, saying a group of men recognized them as FBI agents and “deliberately” pushed toward them, became “increasingly agitated,” and yelled and gestured at them. Some in the crowd began chanting “kneel down,” a gesture widely seen at the time as a sign of solidarity with Floyd, who was pinned to the pavement by police with a knee on his neck.
The agents closest to the crowd were the first to kneel. After the crowd’s attention turned to other agents who were still standing, other FBI employees followed suit and took a knee, acknowledging that it was “the most effective tactical means of preventing violence and maintaining order.” The crowd moved on.
“Plaintiffs demonstrated tactical intelligence in their choice of lethal force (the only force available to them at the actual matter, given their lack of adequate crowd control equipment) and non-lethal responses to save lives and maintain order,” the lawsuit states. “The agents chose the option to prevent casualties while maintaining law enforcement missions. Each Plaintiff kneeled for apolitical, tactical reasons to defuse a volatile situation, and not as an expressive political act.”
In addition to seeking reinstatement, the lawsuit seeks a judgment declaring the firing unconstitutional, back pay and other monetary damages, and the expungement of personnel files related to the firing.
