A former FBI official slammed FBI Director Kash Patel on Friday for reportedly firing an agent trainee who displayed a homosexual pride flag on his desk.
“That is insane on so many ranges,” stated Michael Feinberg, a former assistant particular agent in cost, in an interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.
Patel — who notified the agent in coaching of his instant termination in a letter dated Oct. 1 — cited the agent trainee’s “poor judgement” for putting “an inappropriate show of political signage” on his desk whereas assigned to the Los Angeles area workplace below Joe Biden’s administration, according to MSNBC.
The letter didn’t explicitly confer with the satisfaction flag. CNN was first to report the firing.
The agent trainee — a longtime worker with the FBI — was the recipient of a number of awards for service, was a area workplace variety program coordinator and displayed a satisfaction flag at his workstation, per CNN. Two company veterans informed the community that such a show doesn’t violate the FBI’s previous insurance policies.
Wednesday’s firing arrives lower than per week after stories surfaced on the FBI terminating more than a dozen agents who were pictured kneeling throughout a 2020 racial justice protest in Washington, D.C., following the homicide of George Floyd.
Trump — when asked by Actual America’s Voice reporter Brian Glenn final month about “lots of people” feeling “threatened” by the Progress Delight flag, which incorporates components of the transgender flag — stated he would have “no downside” banning its show if the First Modification didn’t get in the best way.
HuffPost has reached out to the FBI for remark.
Win McNamee through Getty Photos
Feinberg, in his interview with Wallace, famous that there are issues below the Hatch Act that prohibit sure kinds of “political advocacy” by federal workers. Nevertheless, a satisfaction flag “implicates none of these.”
He added that each FBI area workplace and Justice Division constructing would fly the satisfaction flag exterior of their amenities in June when he labored for the FBI.
“So what this worker was doing was in no way out of line, out of the norm or in any respect inappropriate,” Feinberg stated. “It’s absolute insanity, and the truth that Kash Patel would go after this particular person is lunacy.”
Feinberg claimed that the agent trainee — whom he didn’t identify — gained an Legal professional Basic’s Award, the DOJ’s highest award for investigative or prosecutorial accomplishments.
Feinberg, who spent a portion of his profession on the FBI in the identical workplace because the agent trainee, stated his previous colleagues burdened the significance of the worker’s involvement within the company.
“This erosion of constitutional protections and rule of regulation is getting thus far out of hand that I don’t perceive why Americans are placing up with it,” he stated.
