Ex-FBI agents sue Patel over protest firing

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 16: Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel prepares to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on September 16, 2025 in Washington, DC. Patel was questioned about last week’s assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and his social media posts related to the FBI’s investigation of the shooting, as well as a lawsuit filed by former senior FBI officials who were terminated by Patel for what they claim are political reasons. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

FBI Director Kash Patel prepares to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 16, 2025

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

What happened

A dozen former FBI agents fired for kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest in Washington, D.C., filed a joint lawsuit Monday against FBI Director Kash Patel and the Trump administration, alleging unlawful retaliation. The former counterterrorism agents, deployed by President Donald Trump to manage protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, said in their lawsuit they had “kneeled for apolitical tactical reasons to defuse a volatile situation” after being cornered by an agitated crowd, “not as an expressive political act.”

Who said what

The unnamed plaintiffs — nine women and three men — were “one of the largest groups of former law enforcement officials to challenge the Trump administration in court over its continuing purge of personnel at the Justice Department,” The New York Times said. Other agents “pushed out in recent months have worked on investigations involving Trump or his allies and in one case displayed an LGBTQ+ flag in his workspace,” The Associated Press said.

According to the lawsuit, the FBI cleared the agents of all wrongdoing after a photo of them kneeling “went viral, drawing the ire of conservative commentators and politicians,” The Washington Post said, but Patel started new disciplinary investigations over the summer and fired the agents before the reviews were completed, violating FBI rules. The lawsuit contends that orders to fire the agents “came directly from the White House,” CNN said, and that Patel had already selected the agents to fire “before he joined the agency early this year.”

What next?

The former FBI agents are seeking their jobs back as well as a “court judgment declaring the firings unconstitutional, back pay and other monetary damages and an expungement of personnel files related to the terminations,” the AP said.

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.