FBI fires agents seen kneeling in photo during 2020 George Floyd protests

The FBI has fired agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington that followed the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, three people familiar with the matter say.

The bureau last spring had reassigned the agents but has since fired them, say the people, who insist on anonymity to discuss personnel matters with The Associated Press.

The number of FBI employees terminated was not immediately clear, but two people say it was roughly 20.

The photographs at issue showed a group of agents in a taking a knee during one of the demonstrations following the May 2020 killing of Floyd, a death that led to a national reckoning over policing and racial injustice and sparked widespread anger after millions of people saw video of the arrest. The kneeling had angered some in the FBI but was also understood as a possible de-escalation tactic during a period of protests.

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

“As Director Patel has repeatedly stated, nobody is above the law,” the agents association says. “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.”

An FBI spokesman declines to comment.