Washington– Twelve former FBI agents He was shot after kneeling during a racial justice protest in 2020 Authorities in Washington filed a lawsuit on Monday to get their jobs back, saying their action was intended to calm a volatile situation and was not intended as a political gesture.
The agents say in their lawsuit that manager Kash Patel fired them in September because they were seen as politically unaffiliated with President Donald Trump. But they say their decision to kneel on June 4, 2020, Days after the death of George Floyd By Minneapolis police, it was misinterpreted as a political expression.
The suit says the agents were assigned to patrol the nation’s capital during a period of civil unrest sparked by Floyd’s death. Lacking protective equipment or extensive crowd control training, the agents became outnumbered by the hostile crowds they encountered and decided to kneel on the ground in hopes of defusing the tension, the suit said. The lawsuit asserts that this tactic worked, as the crowds dispersed, no shots were fired, and the agents “saved American lives” that day.
“Plaintiffs were discharging their duties as FBI special agents and using reasonable de-escalation to prevent a potentially deadly confrontation with American citizens: a Washington Massacre that could have rivaled the Boston Massacre of 1770,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington represents the latest legal challenge to a purge that has roiled the FBI, targeting top supervisors and executive agents, as Patel worked to reshape the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Besides the kneeling customers, other employees have been fired in recent months They worked on investigations related to Trump Or his allies, in one case Display an LGBTQ+ sign in his workspace.
After photos of the agents kneeling emerged, the FBI conducted an internal review, in which the then-Deputy Director determined that the agents were not politically motivated and should not be punished. The Justice Department’s inspector general reached a similar conclusion and criticized the department for putting agents in a precarious position that day, the lawsuit says.
It was not until Patel took over the office in February that the FBI took a different stance.
Several kneeling agents were removed from supervisory positions last spring and a new disciplinary investigation was launched that led to agents being interviewed about their actions. This internal process was still pending when in September agents received terse letters informing them that they were being terminated for “unprofessional conduct and lack of impartiality in the performance of duties, resulting in the government being used as a political weapon.”
“Defendants fired Plaintiffs in a partisan attempt to retaliate against FBI employees they perceived to be sympathetic to political opponents of President Trump,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants acted summarily to avoid creating any further administrative record that would expose their actions as retaliatory and unjustified.”
Prosecutors are among 22 agents from various teams across Washington who were deployed to downtown D.C. on June 4, 2020 to demonstrate a visible law enforcement operation during a time of protests in the nation’s capital and across the country.
The lawsuit asserts that the agents were pushed into a chaotic scene, saying a crowd of people recognized them as FBI agents and “intentionally” pushed toward them, becoming “increasingly agitated” and screaming and gesturing toward them. Some in the crowd began chanting “Get on your knees,” a gesture that was widely recognized at that point as a sign of solidarity with Floyd, who was pinned to the sidewalk by police with a knee on his neck.
Customers closest to the crowd were the first to kneel. After the crowd’s attention turned to the other agents who remained standing, other FBI agents followed suit, taking a knee in recognition of it as “the most tactically sound means of preventing violence and maintaining order.” The crowd moved on.
“Plaintiffs demonstrated tactical astuteness in choosing between lethal force — the only force practically available to them, given their lack of adequate crowd control equipment — and a less-lethal response that would save lives and maintain order,” the lawsuit says. “The special agents chose the option that prevented casualties while preserving their law enforcement mission. Each prosecutor knelt for non-political, tactical reasons to defuse a volatile situation, not as a politically expressive action.”
In addition to seeking reinstatement, the lawsuit also seeks a court ruling declaring the terminations unconstitutional, the payment of arrears and other financial damages, and the deletion of personnel files related to the termination.