Joe Kent

Could be dangerous.

You have to take it seriously because, you know, unserious people can commit violence.

And so, sure, I'm not downplaying the risk.

I'm just saying it didn't seem to be that serious to me.

But to my knowledge, the Iranians did deploy.

They recruited him.

They deployed him.

He came here to the U.S.

We had prior knowledge of that through intelligence means.

And so when he came to America, he was basically in the pocket, unbeknownst to him, of the FBI.

The FBI then leveraged a confidential human source at him.

So there was never actually any – according to what we've learned from the trial, not a direct threat to the president.

So that's as serious as that was.

Now –

There wasn't, in my opinion, enough due diligence done to see if there was anyone else that Merchant was speaking with that could be tied to Butler because Butler got wrapped up just so quickly.

And all the requests that we made once we came in to the FBI and to the DOJ to investigate leads that could confirm or deny whether or not there was any linkage between anyone that Merchant, and in particular the human source they used, and Butler, Crooks or anyone in Butler,

Those were all denied.

That wasn't looked into.

And it's been publicly reported that the DHS inspector general, he's also been blocked from investigating a lot of the DHS activities that day on the ground in Butler.

So ask you just final thought on this about the FBI.