Since his instatement to Director of the FBI this year, Kash Patel has begun weeding out and dismissing Trump’s opponents in the bureau. A string of lawsuits have followed.
Last week, 12 former FBI agents announced a lawsuit against Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Office of the President of the United States, among others. They are suing for wrongful termination after being accused of “unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties,” regarding their actions during a George Floyd protest five years ago.
In 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests raged across the country, several units from the FBI offices in Virginia and Washington, DC, were deployed to quell protests in the capital. During one of these protests, the Plaintiffs’ FBI unit was approached by a crowd of protesters, and was
Kash Patel, director of the FBI, speaks at a rally in Nevada in 2022. (AP / José Luis Villegas)backed up to the wall of the National Archives. The crowd began to chant “take a knee,” demanding a symbolic gesture in support of George Floyd, who had been killed by officers in Minneapolis a few months before. With their backs to the wall, the agents chose to kneel, and the protestors eventually moved on.
Photos of the agents kneeling in front of the National Archives went viral, and many Republican politicians and commentators — including former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz — demanded the agents be fired for expressing support for the protestors. Despite this, an internal investigation after the protest concluded that the agents had acted responsibly to minimize altercations and prevent escalation. The investigation also found that the Trump administration had improperly deployed the unit, which had no training in crowd control and lacked the appropriate gear. Instead, the agents were only equipped with their standard service weapons, leaving them no option other than deadly force to respond with if protestors became violent.
After Patel was confirmed as Director of the FBI earlier this year, he reopened the investigation. Patel demoted and later fired the agents who were photographed. The agents, Patel argued, had inappropriately expressed political views in the line of duty. Mary Dohrman, counsel for the Plaintiffs, however, has claimed that the administration is “targeting these patriotic and highly skilled FBI agents for purely partisan reasons.”
The agents — many of whom were decorated members of the agency — argue that they weren’t making a political statement. Instead, they say that they were acting in order to de-escalate the situation. If they had been making a political statement, the FBI might have grounds to terminate their employment, but the lawsuit asserts that the First Amendment “forbids government officials from dismissing public employees for partisan reasons.” It argues that the firings were politically motivated, but the agents’ actions were not.
Similar incidents have occurred over the last year as Patel continues to restructure the FBI. Last month, three agents also filed a lawsuit against Patel for wrongful termination regarding their involvement in investigating the insurrection of January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. The three agents, “among the most senior and lauded FBI agents to have worked at the bureau in recent memory,” also allege that their terminations were politically motivated.
In another incident in the LA office, a recently dismissed agent filed a lawsuit against Patel and the agency after he received a notice of termination for displaying a Pride flag in his workspace. Earlier this year, after Patel was tapped as head of the agency, FBI offices across the country were required to take down “political signage” like Pride and Progress flags. After the flag hung outside the LA office was taken down, it was given to an agent who, with permission from his superiors, hung it in his workspace. Shortly thereafter, he was given a letter written by Patel explaining that he would be released from service for failing to comply with the new regulations.
In recent months, Patel has also turned the long-time practice of using polygraphs to test agents’ loyalty to the Bureau and their country into a political weapon against his own employees. In these mandatory interviews, it is now common for agents to be asked about their voting patterns or whether they have made any disparaging remarks about the current President or Director of the FBI while being polygraphed.
In all of these cases, the FBI and Patel himself allege that agents had made political statements in the line of duty. However, in every instance, the agents were not expressing political views, or at least did not do so in violation of federal protections for free speech. The federal government does have more legal right to restrict free speech than most employers do, but this is a step too far. The federal government can’t assume the political motivations of its employees as a basis for firing them. In his crusade for reform within the FBI, Patel has instituted a policy of eliminating any agent whose actions imply any disregard for the administration’s political agenda.
This practice is dangerous territory for the agency. As the attorney representing the 12 DC agents said in response to these lawsuits, “People in law enforcement and professionals in law enforcement are being given the message, both explicitly and implicitly, that their first responsibility is to show loyalty to the administration rather than the fidelity of their oath.”
In the 12 agents’ dismissal letters, Patel wrote: “You have demonstrated unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of government.”
The irony of Patel’s complaint about political weaponization of the government is damning.
If accomplished and respected senior members of the agency don’t feel secure in their jobs and are summarily fired for demonstrating differing political views than those of the administration — even indirectly — the FBI will not only lose experienced and effective agents but also any respect or validity that they have as the premier investigative agency in the United States.
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