FBI agents reassigned after kneeling at George Floyd’s BLM protest in Washington DC

The FBI has reassigned several agents who were photographed kneeling with protesters in Washington during the 2020 racial justice protests after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Conservatives have pointed to the photo, taken during United States President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House, as proof that the bureau harbours a liberal agenda.

The reassignments have angered current and former colleagues, who say that FBI agents are not trained for riot control and that these officers were unjustly punished for trying to defuse a tense situation.

Some of those interviewed, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution, said they see it as another example of the Trump Administration punishing personnel whom it considers part of the liberal “deep state.”

At least four of those photographed were reassigned to positions across the bureau widely viewed as demotions, the people familiar with the situation said. They had been in senior roles, including in counterintelligence, counterterrorism and cybercrimes.

The agents were not provided a reason for their transfers, said the people familiar with the matter.

“Those agents were not ever trained to be in that situation,” said one former agent familiar with the matter.

“Riot control is not our mission. We are trained to de-escalate.’’

CNN first reported the reassignments, which are part of a wider effort by the Trump Administration to remake the FBI under Director Kash Patel and root out employees seen as unwilling to carry out Mr Trump’s agenda.

In the first days of the Trump Administration, many senior leaders at the bureau were fired or transferred.

Some who worked on the criminal cases against Mr Trump and led field offices across the country have also been removed from their jobs, often given no reason for the abrupt decisions, according to several people.

During the Biden Administration, members of Congress pressed then-FBI Director Christopher A. Wray about why some of the agents in the photo had been promoted.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment, saying the bureau does not discuss personnel matters.

Mr Trump and then-Attorney General William P. Barr sent agents, mostly from the Washington field office, to respond to the June 2020 protest in the nation’s capital, according to three former officials.

Barr wanted a federal presence in the streets as a deterrent to rioters or protesters who might try to vandalise federal property, said one former senior official. Around the same time, protesters in Portland, Oregon, were vandalising the federal courthouse there.

The situation became controversial once federal agents were sent in, former senior officials recalled.

As one said, “We’re the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re trained to do investigations, not riot control.”

When the agents knelt, their colleagues were divided.

Some thought that they should not have knelt because it sent a message that law enforcement was not in control of the situation, and that it could be viewed as a political statement in support of the Black Lives Matter protesters, the former official said.

Other colleagues defended them, arguing that they were placed in an untenable situation and that they made the gesture as a way to de-escalate, the former official said.

FBI leadership reviewed the matter and ultimately concluded that no disciplinary action was necessary “because there was no violation of policy that they could point to,” the former official said.

Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.

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