Rachel Poser

Bongino is a former Secret Service agent who'd become a pro-Trump podcaster and Fox News commentator.

He also has a conspiratorial bent.

He described FBI agents as thugs for the Democratic Party and called for disbanding the bureau.

Yeah.

After Charlie Kirk was shot in September, Patel immediately tries to jump into the center of the action, which is very unusual for an FBI director.

The first thing that often happens when a crisis incident like that takes place is that there's a big call with all of the executives in Washington, most of the field offices.

And the director usually says very little because someone who is on the ground and knows what resources they need is leading the call.

But when 200-plus agents tune in for this call in the hours after Kirk is shot, they're in the midst of this manhunt trying to find his killer.

Patel takes over the call.

He's berating the special agent in charge in Salt Lake.

And he starts scripting out his social media strategy.

He's telling Bongino and the field office what to tweet.

And all of this takes a lot of time and attention away from the investigation.

I mean, we did hear from some agents who felt like the Bureau had not been good enough in the past at telegraphing all of the work that it was doing to keep the American people safe.

But the way that Patel and Bongino were going about this, they didn't feel was solving for that problem.

I mean, agents were being told to take pictures for social media while they were out doing raids and making arrests, which they felt just compromised operational security and their safety.

So it seemed to most of the people we spoke to like this was really putting –

the politics and the optics over the mission.

Yeah, and we saw that this focus on optics wasn't only frustrating agents at the Bureau.

It was really frustrating our allies abroad, too.