Kash Patel, FBI Director, has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a protest that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
As CNN & AP report, 15 agents were fired, after a monthslong review, that were associated with the kneeling protest. Some agents who were present at the protest but didn’t kneel were not fired, the outlet noted.
The FBI Agents Association told CNN that 15 agents were dismissed and criticized FBI Director Kash Patel’s leadership, saying the dismissals “violate the due process rights” of the agents.
“Patel’s dangerous new pattern of actions are weakening the Bureau because they eliminate valuable expertise and damage trust between leadership and the workforce, and make it harder to recruit and retain skilled agents — ultimately putting our nation at greater risk,” the organization said in a statement Friday night.
“As Director Patel has repeatedly stated, nobody is above the law,” the agents association said. “But rather than providing these agents with fair treatment and due process, Patel chose to again violate the law by ignoring these agents’ constitutional and legal rights instead of following the requisite process.”
The photographs at issue showed a group of agents taking the knee during one of the demonstrations following the May 2020 killing of Floyd, a death that led to a national reckoning over policing and racial injustice and sparked widespread anger after millions of people saw video of the arrest.
The firings come amid a broader personnel purge at the bureau as Patel works to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.
Five agents and top-level executives were known to have been summarily fired last month in a wave of ousters that current and former officials say has contributed to declining morale.