FBI reassigns agents photographed kneeling during 2020 racial justice protest, AP sources say

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has reassigned several 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, two people familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

The reasons for the moves were not immediately clear, though they come as the FBI under Director Kash Patel has been undertaking broad personnel changes and as Deputy Director Dan Bongino has repeatedly sought to reassure supporters of President Donald Trump who are critical of the bureau that their complaints are being taken seriously.

“The Director and I are working on a number of significant initiatives to ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated, and that many of your open questions are answered,” Bongino wrote in one recent post on X, formerly known as Twitter. He did not specify what mistakes or questions he was referring to.

The reassignments, first reported by CNN, were confirmed to The Associated Press by two people familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss non-public personnel moves. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

The photographs at issue showed a group of agents taking a knee during one of the demonstrations following the May 2020 killing of Floyd, a death that sparked widespread anger after millions of people saw video of his arrest and led to a national reckoning over policing and racial injustice.

The kneeling angered some in the FBI but was also understood as a possible de-escalation tactic during a period of widespread protests, and the agents were not punished at the time.

Patel pledged at his January confirmation hearing that he would not “go backwards” in seeking retribution against perceived adversaries of the Trump administration. But even before he was sworn in, there was concern that the Justice Department was poised to do exactly that, including by demanding a list of the thousands of agents who worked on investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, a request seen by some as a possible precursor to a purge at the bureau.