Five years late, but it finally happened — the FBI has canned the agents who took a knee with rioters in Washington, D.C. back in June 2020. After endless “investigations” and lawyerly foot-dragging, the bureau’s inspection division and general counsel’s office finally rubber-stamped what should have been obvious from the start: federal agents have no business siding with the mob.
Back in June 2020, during the so-called Mostly Peaceful™ George Floyd demonstrations in Washington, D.C., a group of FBI agents was photographed kneeling in solidarity. At the time, “taking a knee” had become the trendy badge of honor for anyone eager to show sympathy with the rioters tearing apart American cities.
And here’s what’s always baffled us: the very same folks who screamed themselves hoarse over the Russia Hoax never seemed the least bit curious about who was actually bankrolling and coordinating these riots — or how the organizers managed to have an endless travel budget while the rest of the country was locked down.
Now the apologists are rushing in, spinning excuses for the 15 to 20 agents who just got the boot. Their defense? That this was just a case of “untrained agents doing the best they could.” Please. Nobody forced them to kneel in solidarity with rioters — that was a choice:
Trump and then-Attorney General William P. Barr had deployed agents, mostly from the FBI’s Washington field office, in response to the mostly peaceful demonstrations [yes, they actually wrote that part] across the nation’s capital. They said they were needed to deter rioters or vandals seeking to destroy federal property, as had happened in some cities such as Portland, Oregon.
But critics derided the images as what they viewed as a group of agents expressing solidarity with the protests. They pointed to the photographs as proof of a liberal bias in the FBI.
The agents’ defenders maintained that the photos depicted nothing more than bureau personnel injected into a charged atmosphere between protesters and police and attempting to do anything to de-escalate before a tense situation boiled over.
At best, this was pure cowardice. Instead of doing their jobs, these agents chose to take a knee and take a pass. There wasn’t even evidence that the crowd was threatening the FBI building, so their preemptive surrender looked pathetic. At worst, they weren’t just kneeling — they were switching sides, throwing in with rioters during a civil disturbance. That kind of disloyalty demands punishment, if only to send a clear signal to the rest of the bureau.
In that moment, Americans had every right to question whose side the FBI was really on. And let’s be blunt: one of those kneeling agents stood out so badly he should’ve been fired on principle alone.
Yes, lawsuits will follow. But until the courts grind through them years down the line, these agents are done. Fired. And frankly, that’s the bare minimum.
