By Scott MacFarlane
In a federal civil lawsuit filed in Washington Monday, a dozen former FBI agents are seeking to get their jobs back, claiming they were fired during the second Trump administration for their efforts in 2020 to head off a riot in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
The former agents say they were unlawfully terminated by the Justice Department earlier this year for kneeling in 2020, as tensions were rising on the streets of Washington, D.C., soon after Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
They allege FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the FBI and the Justice Department terminated them based on a perception of the agents that they were “not affiliated with President Trump.”
The lawsuit recounts the actions the former agents say they took on June 4, 2020, just over a week after Floyd was killed. That day, as they were patrolling the district, the agents “were confronted by a mob that included hostile individuals alongside families with young children,” the lawsuit said.
“The Special Agents closest to the mob were the first to kneel,” the plaintiffs’ suit said. “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.”
And the former agents also contend that they had not been issued “sufficient equipment for responding to civil unrest such as riot shields, gas masks, helmets, or other tactical gear.”
The former agents are not publicly named in the lawsuit and are referred to as Jane and John Does.
“Plaintiffs had been informed that the purpose of the deployment was to show a visible law enforcement presence, and they wore vests marked ‘FBI’ and carried their firearms,” the lawsuit said. “But they were not properly prepared or instructed to conduct crowd control operations.” It continued, “As a result of their tactical decision to kneel, the mass of people moved on without escalating to violence.”
Mary Dohrmann, an attorney representing the agents in the lawsuit, told CBS News, “Internal FBI processes are being subverted in a way that makes us all less safe.”
An FBI spokesperson told CBS News the bureau does not comment on pending litigation, and the FBI did not comment when CBS News reported in September that agents had been fired for kneeling in 2020.
The civil case is filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The fired FBI agents include counterterrorism specialists and agents with more than 15 years’ experience in combating criminals.
According to the lawsuit, “Plaintiff Jane Doe 5 was informed that she was being removed at the direction of Defendant Patel from her position at FBI Headquarters as a Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI overseeing counterintelligence at the direction of Defendant Patel because she kneeled on June 4, 2020.”
Their civil case argues that Patel’s statements show “his actions in this case were motivated by partisan animus toward plaintiffs and not by a fair evaluation of the facts on June 4, 2020.”
The former agents cited Patel’s book, “Government Gangsters,” in which he wrote that some government employees should “be removed from their posts and replaced with people who won’t undermine the president’s agenda.”
The 47-page civil lawsuit is just the latest lawsuit filed by former FBI agents alleging Patel is engaged in political retribution at America’s top law enforcement agency. Former FBI Acting Director Brian Driscoll has filed a federal civil lawsuit challenging his termination. And a group of FBI agents who were under scrutiny for their roles in the investigation of the Capitol riot have also filed a lawsuit to challenge that investigation.
