Molly Parks

Washington Examiner

A dozen former FBI special agents have filed a lawsuit against FBI Director Kash Patel over the bureau’s decision to terminate their employment after the agents knelt during a George Floyd protest in 2020.

The complaint, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, concerns an incident in which the former special agents said they took a knee as a “de-escalation response” to a mob surrounding them during a June 4, 2020, protest in response to the death of Floyd. The plaintiffs said they were fired after Patel triggered an internal review of the incident, which the Biden administration had already reviewed and dismissed.

“On June 4, 2020, our clients acted with calm and professionalism to de-escalate a potentially violent encounter with fellow Americans,” attorney for the plaintiffs Mary Dohrmann, of Washington Litigation Group, said in a statement. “Five years later, Kash Patel and the Trump Administration are targeting these patriotic and highly skilled FBI agents for purely partisan reasons.”

In the complaint, the plaintiffs state they were deployed to the National Archives area in Washington as part of an effort to “show a visible law enforcement presence” during the protests, though they added that they were not properly equipped or prepared for crowd control efforts. The complaint detailed a mob aggressively descending upon the plaintiffs in an “extremely volatile and rapidly deteriorating” way, yelling for the agents to “take a knee.”

“The Special Agents closest to the mob were the first to kneel,” the complaint reads. “Their intent was to prevent a dangerous situation in which confrontational or unwitting civilians might make physical contact with agents or even attempt to gain control of FBI service weapons, necessitating the use of lethal force.”

The plaintiffs said Patel “immediately” began working to terminate the agents who kneeled during the protest when he became director, and that an Inspection Division investigation into the incident began on June 27. The plaintiffs said they each received letters from Patel notifying them of their termination on Sept. 26.

“In the course of making this decision, I considered relevant material pertaining to your case, including the investigation conducted by the FBI’s Inspection Division,” Patel wrote in the letter, according to the complaint. “You have demonstrated unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of government.”

The FBI declined to comment to the Washington Examiner, citing that it is pending litigation.

Dohrmann called the firings a “true weaponization of government” and said the “nation is less safe as a result.”

The plaintiffs demanded a jury trial and filed eight counts, including a violation of the First Amendment for “retaliation for perceived political affiliation.”