Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Twelve East FBI Agents have taken legal initiative Proceeding to retrieve them positionsClaiming he was unlawfully fired after taking a knee during racial justice protests Washington In 2020. Agents argue that their actions were an attempt to defuse a volatile situation and were not a political statement.
In their lawsuit filed on Monday, the agents claim the director Kash Patel He was terminated in September because he was seen as lacking political coordination with the President. donald trumpThey debate their decision to kneel shortly thereafter on June 4, 2020 george floydThe death at the hands of Minneapolis police has been misinterpreted as a political expression.
The lawsuit details how agents were deployed to patrol the US capital amid widespread civil unrest following Floyd’s death. Facing hostile crowds and without adequate protective gear or extensive crowd control training, their numbers dwindled. The lawsuit says he chose to take a knee to reduce tension. They claim that this strategy proved successful: the crowd dispersed, no shots were fired, and agents “saved American lives” that day.
The lawsuit states, “Plaintiffs were performing their duties as FBI special agents, de-escalating reasonable tensions to prevent a potentially fatal confrontation with American civilians: a Washington massacre that could have rivaled the Boston Massacre in 1770.”
The lawsuit in federal court in Washington represents the latest court challenge to the personnel purge that has roiled the FBI, targeting both top-ranking supervisors and line agents as Patel has worked to reshape the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. In addition to the agents who took the knee, other employees outed in recent months have worked on investigations involving Trump or his associates and in one case displayed an LGBTQ+ flag in their workspace.
After photographs of agents kneeling surfaced, the FBI conducted an internal review in which the then-Deputy Director determined that the agents had no political motive and should not be punished. The lawsuit says the Justice Department’s inspector general reached a similar conclusion and blamed the department for putting the agents in a precarious position that day.
It was only after Patel took over the bureau in February that the FBI took a different approach.
Last spring several kneeling agents were removed from supervisory positions and a new disciplinary investigation was launched that resulted in the agents being interviewed about their actions. That internal process was still pending when in September the agents received brief letters informing them that they were being terminated for “unprofessional conduct and lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, thereby leading to political weaponization of the government.”
“Defendants fired Plaintiff in a partisan effort to retaliate against FBI employees because they were sympathetic to President Trump’s political opponents,” the lawsuit says. “And the defendants acted summarily to avoid creating any further administrative records that would reveal their actions as retaliatory and inappropriate.”
The plaintiffs are among 22 agents from various squads across Washington who were deployed to Downtown DC on June 4, 2020, to demonstrate a visible law enforcement process during protests in the nation’s capital and across the country.
The lawsuit claims the agents were pushed into a chaotic scene, stating that the mob recognized them as being from the FBI and “intentionally” pushed toward them, became “increasingly agitated” and began yelling and pointing at them. Some in the crowd began chanting “take a knee”, a gesture widely recognized at the time as a sign of solidarity with Floyd, who was pinned to the sidewalk by police with a knee on his neck.
The agents closest to the crowd were the first to kneel. After turning the crowd’s attention to other agents who remained standing, other FBI employees followed suit and took a knee, acknowledging that it was “the most strategically sound means of preventing violence and maintaining order.” The crowd moved forward.
The lawsuit states, “Given the lack of adequate crowd control equipment, Plaintiffs demonstrated tactical intelligence in choosing between lethal force – the only force available to them as a practical matter – and a less-lethal response that could save lives and maintain order.” “The special agents selected the option that prevented casualties while maintaining their law enforcement mission. Each plaintiff knelt for apolitical tactical reasons, to defuse a volatile situation, and not as an expressive political act.”
In addition to seeking reinstatement, the lawsuit also seeks a court ruling declaring the dismissal unconstitutional, back pay and other monetary damages, and the deletion of personnel files related to the dismissal.