Patel Fires Up to 20 FBI Agents Who Took a Knee at George Floyd Protests in 2020

FBI Agents Association protests the summary firings, done without due process

MS Note: This one feels personal. As a former CIA officer, I know just how much a CIA officer or FBI Agent has invested in a career, and how deeply the concept of service cuts. Knowing that — I’m trying to imagine what it might be like to be 10 or 15 years into an FBI career and then have your career yanked out from under you over something like this, without any due process whatsoever. Or what it would feel like to be working as an FBI agent in this environment. It’s beyond whether they were fired for “wokeness” or not. They might have been kneeling in solidarity, or they might have done it in a calculated attempt to de-escalate. In neither case would it be justifiable to fire them - but the absence of any due process is truly alarming. Anyway, the story follows, in detail.

Up to 20 Agents Who Took a Knee Have Been Summarily Fired

Multiple mainstream outlets report that the FBI has fired a group of agents who were photographed kneeling during a June 2020 racial-justice protest in Washington, D.C., with estimates ranging from “more than a dozen” to “as many as 20.”

Apart from Washington Post, AP, Reuters and othes all reporting it, the FBI Agents Association also weghed in with a statement on Friday afternoon, a few hours after the story broke, confirming it and objecting to the lack of due process. From the AP report:

The FBI Agents Association confirmed in a statement late Friday that more than a dozen agents had been fired, including military veterans with additional statutory protections, and condemned the move as unlawful. It called on Congress to investigate and said the firings were another indication of FBI Director Kash Patel’s disregard for the legal rights of bureau employees.

Not The First Summary Firings at Patel’s FBI

The FBIAA has repeatedly protested summary terminations without due process in a series of public statements since August, condemning the August 8 wave of firings and specifically decrying the dismissal of Assistant Director Brian Driscoll the same day.

In an August 21 letter to Congress, FBIAA added that among the terminated agents were preference-eligible combat veterans whose additional due-process rights were “purposely violated.” (That language is the clearest veterans reference publicly posted by FBIAA before this weekend.)

On September 10, FBIAA said the “recent unprecedented and unlawful terminations” and ensuing litigation show the urgent need to strengthen due-process protections for agents, noting most FBI Special Agents lack the removal protections other federal employees have.

Analysis / Conclusion

The deeper concern here is not only the firings themselves, but the destabilizing precedent they set inside the FBI. A bureau that has always depended on an ethos of apolitical professionalism is now openly punishing agents for symbolic acts—acts that, in context, were widely understood as attempts at de-escalation. Strip away the rhetoric and you’re left with this: long-serving career agents, some of them veterans, are being cast aside without due process.

The ripple effects inside the ranks will be profound. Agents who once believed their careers depended on competence and integrity will now ask themselves: What else might get me fired? A gesture in the wrong moment? A decision that, years later, a new director decides to reinterpret? That kind of fear corrodes trust—not just between agents and leadership, but within the bureau’s culture itself.

Layer onto this the fact that, under current leadership, large numbers of FBI agents have been reassigned from core investigative work—counterintelligence, counterterrorism, organized crime—to relatively petty immigration enforcement duties. That’s a stunning reallocation of the bureau’s finite human capital.

So imagine being a straightforward, apolitical FBI Special Agent—ten or fifteen years into a career dedicated to serving the country. You’ve invested your life in learning the craft, handling sensitive cases, and upholding the rule of law. Now you’re being yanked off meaningful investigations to chase down asylum-seekers, and at the same time you see colleagues abruptly fired for a fleeting act of de-escalation during a protest years ago.

It’s demoralizing. It’s destabilizing. And ultimately, it makes America less safe. An FBI that is distracted, politicized, and fearful is an FBI less capable of doing the hard, essential work that the country counts on them for.

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