This is so wrong. From The New York Times:
An F.B.I. Trainee Hung a Pride Flag Near His Desk. He Says He Was Fired for It.
He described his dismissal as the latest move by senior F.B.I. officials to play play politics, damaging morale and hindering the bureau’s ability to carry out its public safety mission.
David Maltinsky, an F.B.I. agent-in-training, had only a dim suspicion of what was going on when he was suddenly pulled from his classmates one evening last month and called to a meeting with top officials at the academy, where he was only three weeks away from graduation.
A gay man who had previously worked as a civilian cybertech assistant in the Los Angeles field office, Mr. Maltinsky knew that the meeting might have something to do with his sexual identity — or with his wide-ranging efforts at the bureau to promote L.G.B.T.Q. issues.
What he did not expect was the letter he was handed when he arrived at the F.B.I. Academy’s front office.
It was signed by the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, he said, and announced that he was being “summarily dismissed” from the academy because of “political signage” he had once displayed at his work space in Los Angeles. The only thing that could be, he quickly realized, was a rainbow pride flag that had hung near his desk for years and had been given to him as a gift by his former bosses.
On Wednesday, Mr. Maltinsky filed a lawsuit against Mr. Patel and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claiming that his firing was illegal and asking a federal judge to reinstate him at the academy, where he had been pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming a federal agent. He and his lawyers described his dismissal as the latest move by senior F.B.I. officials to play politics with internal personnel moves in a way that has not only damaged morale inside the bureau but has also hindered its ability to carry out its public safety mission.
“Clearly this was not about who I am, but what I am and what I represent,” Mr. Maltinsky said in a recent interview. “It’s about trying to stoke fear in the workplace — especially in the queer community at the F.B.I. — that has nothing to do with protecting the American people.”
The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since taking over the bureau in February, Mr. Patel has overseen a relentless purge of agents — from both field offices across the country and at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington — that has sent shock waves through its sprawling work force.
Some of the fired agents were seasoned veterans who lost their jobs while trying to protect subordinates from being dismissed. Others were accused, sometimes incorrectly, of having worked on criminal cases involving President Trump and his supporters. Still others who had knelt during protests for racial justice in 2020 were shown the door.
Mr. Patel and other administration officials have long claimed that sweeping reforms are needed to cleanse the F.B.I. of agents who they say have tried to tear down Mr. Trump or are now unwilling to follow his agenda. At his confirmation hearings, Mr. Patel said he believed that 98 percent of the F.B.I. was made up of “courageous apolitical warriors for justice” who “just need better leadership.”
But Mr. Maltinsky’s suit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, accused that same leadership — and Mr. Patel, in particular — of pursuing a capricious agenda that appeared to be based on Mr. Trump’s political whims rather than on fostering a productive and cohesive work force.
“All of these firings have signaled that the bureau’s leadership is more than willing to undermine its own ability to perform its law enforcement mission by dismissing people simply because they want to make a political statement,” said Christopher M. Mattei, a lawyer who helped Mr. Maltinsky file his suit.
The lawsuit says that Mr. Maltinsky joined the F.B.I.’s field office in Los Angeles in 2009 as a civilian assistant and spent the next 15 years supporting agents who were pursuing public corruption and cybercrime cases, including a prominent investigation in 2016 into North Korea’s efforts to hack into the computer systems of the Hollywood studio Sony Pictures.
That same year, after 49 people were slain in a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Mr. Maltinsky raised his hand for another responsibility. He became deeply involved in helping the F.B.I. pursue diversity initiatives, ultimately winning a top prize for his efforts from the bureau’s leadership in Washington.
In 2021, in recognition for his work, his lawsuit says, the assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles field office presented him with the pride flag that had flown for the entire previous month outside the office on the grounds of the Wilshire Federal Building.
For nearly the next four years, the flag was displayed on the wall of Mr. Maltinsky’s work space along with other personal trinkets, he said, including a Darth Vader coffee mug and figurines of characters from the TV show “Stranger Things.”
No one seemed to mind until after Mr. Trump, who has targeted diversity measures, was re-elected and someone at the Los Angeles office complained about the flag, according to the lawsuit. Mr. Maltinsky’s supervisor told him about the complaint, but also said the way in which the flag had been displayed was “entirely permissible and appropriate,” the lawsuit said.
By June, Mr. Maltinsky had left Los Angeles and started classes at the F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Va. He made it through 16 of the course’s 19 weeks and was already assigned to the field office in Seattle when he was fired by Mr. Patel.
When he got the news, he sent the other 48 trainees in his section of the class a message in their group chat.
“I have loved working here and getting to know you over the past 16 weeks,” he wrote. “My chapter here may be over but yours is just beginning. Stay strong. Be the future leaders of the F.B.I. I know you are and what the people deserve.”
Even though academy officials had been told to escort him from the premises immediately, one of them realized that Mr. Maltinsky had nowhere else to go that night. He offered to let him quietly get some rest and take off in the morning.
Mr. Maltinsky was grateful for the offer, but decided to leave at once.
“I just felt like, OK, you don’t want me here then I’m not staying,” he said.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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