Upon his nomination to the role of FBI director, Kash Patel vowed to clean house and eliminate left-wing bias perceived to have taken hold among agency leadership in recent years.
It appears that Patel is making good on that promise amid reports that the FBI has fired a number of agents who were seen kneeling during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in the nation’s capital, as Breitbart explains.
Details of the dismissals were reported by the Associated Press, which cited three individuals familiar with the situation.
According to the outlet, the firings impacted agents who had been reassigned in the spring, and though the total number of affected employees was not disclosed, sources suggested it was somewhere around 20.
The agents in question were photographed taking a knee during the aforementioned demonstration, an event which followed the police-involved death of George Floyd, which sparked destructive protests in cities across the country.
Images of federal agents kneeling in apparent solidarity with sometimes-violent demonstrators sparked outrage at the time, though some observers took a more charitable view of their decision.
Those defending the agents’ conduct suggested that kneeling amid the protests was a means of de-escalating what had regularly become dangerous scenarios over the course of that summer.
The administration’s prior decision to reassign the agents at issue was viewed as part of President Donald Trump’s push to rid federal agencies, particularly those involved in law enforcement and intelligence matters, of woke ideology, and the dismissals have amplified the voices of White House critics.
Not surprisingly, the FBI Agents Association has weighed in, blasting the agents’ firings and suggesting that litigation and congressional investigation are in order.
“As Director Patel has repeatedly stated, nobody is above the law. 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 union said in a statement.
The union also declared, according to NPR, “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 FBI, for its part, did not offer comment on what were described as personnel matters, and the specific identities of fired agents were not immediately available.
These dismissals come amid a broader personnel reshuffling at the FBI under Patel, with a series of top-level officials also facing ouster in recent weeks, as Fox News explains.
Three former agents recently filed suit over their own respective job losses, alleging that current agency leadership has exhibited blatant disregard for the law to exact retribution on behalf of the president, but whether those claims will eventually prevail in court, only time will tell.
