Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we're going to talk about FBI Director Kash Patel with Mark Fisher, who profiles Patel on the current issue of The New Yorker.
Chapter 2: What are the main controversies surrounding Kash Patel's appointment as FBI Director?
It's titled Kash Patel's Acts of Service. It's subtitled, The FBI Director Isn't Just Enforcing the President's Agenda at the Bureau, He's Seeking Retribution for Its Past Investigations of Donald Trump.
Fisher also writes about other controversies surrounding Patel, ranging from whether he's even qualified for the job to his conflicts of interest and how he's transforming the FBI's mission as he focuses on cracking down on undocumented immigrants.
Journalist Mark Fisher was a longtime writer and editor at The Washington Post and co-author of the book Trump Revealed before becoming a New Yorker contributor. We recorded our interview yesterday morning before both the House and the Senate approved the release of the Epstein files.
Let's start with an excerpt of what Patel had to say about the Epstein files when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee last September. Here he is being questioned by California Democrat Eric Swalwell.
You said you don't know the number of times Trump's name appears in the files, so it could at least be a thousand times. Is that right?
The number is a total misleading factor. We have not released anyone's name in the Epstein files that has not been credible. We have released every piece of legally permissible information. You can characterize the numbers however you want it.
You're claiming my time, Director. It sounds like if you don't know the number, it could at least be a thousand times.
It's not. It's not.
Is it at least 500 times? No. Is it at least 100 times? No.
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Chapter 3: How has Kash Patel's leadership impacted the FBI's mission?
Then what's the number? I don't know the number, but it's not that. Do you think it might be your job to know the number?
My job is to provide for the safety and security of this country. My job is not to engage in political innuendo so you can go out to the sticks and get your 20-second hit in your fundraising article. Keep going, reclaiming your time, because the people of California are being underserved by your representation.
If the president is not implicated, why not release everything that involves him?
We have released everything. The president and anyone else's side... that is credible and lawfully be able to be released. Your fixation on this matter and baseless accusations that I'm hiding child pedophiles is disgusting. Anyone that says that needs to look at the stats alone.
And go back to the state of California, who's receiving the biggest surge in FBI resources through my redeployment because the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco need it.
Reclaiming my time, Director. Remembering your oath to tell the truth, did you ever tell Donald Trump his name is in the files?
I have never spoken to President Trump about the Epstein files.
Did you ever tell the Attorney General that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files?
The Attorney General and I have had numerous discussions about the entirety of the Epstein files and the reviews conducted by our team.
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of Patel's comments regarding the Epstein files?
Why don't you try spelling it out?
Yes or no? Use the alphabet. Yes or no?
No. A, B, C, D, E, F. It sounds like you don't want to tell us.
Did you tell the Attorney General that Donald Trump's name was in the Epstein files?
Why don't you try serving your constituency by focusing on reducing violent crime in this country and the number of pedophiles that are legally harbored in your sanctuary cities in California? I'll work with you on that.
Do you want to work with us on that? I'm an honest gentleman from California. Did you tell the Attorney General that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files?
The question has been asked and answered.
You've not answered it, and we will take your evasiveness as a consciousness of guilt.
Mark Fisher, welcome to Fresh Air. Your profile of Kash Patel is very informative and very interesting. What was your reaction when you first heard Swalwell questioning Kash Patel?
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Chapter 5: How does Kash Patel view his relationship with Donald Trump?
But in Kash Patel's case, it often goes a bit beyond the available facts. So, for example, Patel has believed for many years now that he is a target of a media conspiracy to portray him in a dark light and to make up things about him. And so he has sued a series of news organizations. Claiming that they have defamed him. He sued the New York Times. He sued CNN. He sued Politico.
In every case, he got a big splash in the news. And in every case, he ended up withdrawing the suit or seeing it thrown out by a judge. In the case of the January 6th assault on the Capitol.
Kash Patel has, for a couple of years, been presenting the theory that the FBI itself had recruited operatives of one sort or another who were in the crowd on January 6th and who were perhaps encouraging the rioters to be more aggressive in their attack on the Capitol. He's never presented the slightest evidence for this, and yet he continues to present this idea even as director of the FBI.
He has said that there may have been such people and they may have very much egged on the crowd on January 6th, sort of portraying the January 6th attack almost as an inside job.
So since Trump was president on January 6th, I mean, he was about to leave the White House, but he was president then. If it was an inside job in the sense that the FBI sent people into militias to urge them to be more aggressive and even violent, Why isn't that a Trump administration problem? The FBI director at this time was somebody appointed by President Trump.
Yes, it's absolutely right. The January 6th attack took place at the very tail end of the first Trump administration. So if, as Patel theorizes, the FBI in 2020 and the first days of 2021 –
was using its own confidential sources and placing those sources within the militia groups that were plotting the January 6th attack, it's perfectly reasonable to ask, does that mean that the first Trump administration was in some regard responsible for the attack? This is an aspect of this conspiracy theory that Kash Patel somehow never gets around to talking about.
He sees the FBI as kind of a rogue operation. And so it fits in with his overall theory of this deep state that is the real governing factor in the United States. And this deep state doing its own thing, seeding these sources into the January 6th attack groups without perhaps the knowledge of Trump and the Trump administration.
And, you know, the FBI did have some contacts who were from time to time inside some of the militia groups. So were they there for the purpose of encouraging those groups to take this more violent approach on January 6th? No evidence has been presented along those lines.
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Chapter 6: What criticisms have emerged regarding Patel's management style?
Sure.
It's really a thoroughgoing change that he's brought to the FBI. The FBI has about 13,000 agents and about a quarter of them have been assigned to work on going out and catching undocumented immigrants. This has not generally been a major focus for the FBI.
Hundreds more agents have been sent on these missions along with the National Guard to do basic sort of crime patrols in cities like Washington, D.C. and Chicago. This is part of this emphasis on combating violent crime that President Trump has. began some months back. So what's not being done? Well, for example, Patel disbanded the public corruption unit in the Washington field office.
This is the group that investigates wrongdoing by public officials, including this is the office that investigated Trump and various other Republicans for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. I was given one example after another by various agents in the FBI of cases, for example, of someone working on Chinese counterterrorism efforts in the United States.
One such agent was pulled off a case to essentially do street patrol in the District of Columbia doing DWI arrests. So it's a wholesale rejiggering of what agents are doing. It's resulting in a lot of people retiring early, retiring as soon as they're able to, and quite a number, as you said, who've been fired.
Also, Patel has lowered the standards for getting hired into the FBI. New agents no longer need a college degree, and now new agents have to take a polygraph test that includes loyalty to the FBI director.
Yeah, this is something that Patel has denied, but we heard this from several agents who said they've been asked about their loyalty to Director Patel and to his own personal agenda. This is one of a number of ways in which a lot of FBI agents feel like the standards for being an agent have been lowered.
For example, Patel has shortened the length of the FBI Academy from 18 weeks to eight weeks of training. And he's no longer requiring all new agents to have a college degree. Many agents in the FBI have advanced degrees. And many of them have done specialized work in languages and so on to prepare themselves for the kind of international investigations that the Bureau does so well.
So it's really disappointing to a lot of the people who've devoted their lives to the Bureau to see what they see as a watering down of those standards.
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