Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.
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From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.
From the moment he was appointed director of the FBI, Kash Patel has invited controversy and concern about what his leadership would look like and how it might affect the agency that's tasked with protecting the United States from threats at home and abroad. Today, my colleagues Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser spoke to dozens of current and former FBI employees about how the FBI has been transformed.
It's Wednesday, April 22nd. Emily Bazelon, welcome to The Daily. Thanks so much for having us. Rachel Poser, first time on The Daily. Welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. So we have talked a lot on the show about all of these dramatic ways that the Trump administration has reshaped the role and the function of the federal government. A lot of those results are quite visible. ICE agents in the streets. Prosecutors defying court orders. But one of the agencies that has been reshaped in perhaps less visible ways is the FBI. The two of you embarked on an enormous, ambitious reporting project to try to really get inside the FBI. So tell us what specifically you were trying to understand about the agency and how it was functioning under the Trump administration.
The FBI, you know, since the scandals of Watergate, since those days, has really tried to operate independently of the White House and to follow the facts without fear or favor. That's a big deal in the bureau. And so when Trump was elected, he had a record of calling the bureau corrupt, of being very angry that he had been investigated.
Well, I think the FBI was a very corrupt institution, and I'm a victim of it in a true sense. I was able to beat it.
And the Trump administration came in and they were really clear about this. The mission of the agency was changing.
Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice. But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over.
And, you know, the FBI, much of what it does is secret. But we wanted to see what this transformation looked like. And so we embarked on this investigation where we talked to 45 current and former FBI employees. Oh, wow. And what we found was an agency that was really straining under political pressure, where the leadership was transformed into something much more partisan than anyone at the FBI had seen before. And where agents were finding themselves doing work that felt to them like it was different and at odds with their own sense of mission and purpose. And they were just really beginning to worry about the safety and security of the country.
Well, let's start with the leadership aspect of this, because I imagine that in large part, your reporting has to do with Trump's pick for the FBI director, Kash Patel. Patel is a really controversial figure. He's often been accused of pretty erratic behavior.
What controversies surrounded Kash Patel's appointment as FBI director?
What has your reporting shown about his tenure?
So Kash Patel was a highly unusual pick for this role. He had never worked for the FBI and did not have much experience in federal law enforcement at all. He'd been a public defender and he worked as an intelligence official in the first Trump term. He's described by people who know him at the time as not particularly hardworking, but very cocky, ambitious, full of bluster.
Because the subpoena list that Donald Trump should execute in this proceedings— is going to be monumental. I want him to subpoena every government gangster that has ever called him out bogusly. We're going to subpoena Garland, Ray. We're going to put all them in the hot seat.
Most importantly, he's somebody who has spun conspiracy theories about the bureau in the past. He says that Joe Biden rigged the 2020 election.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–3:44
2
What controversies surrounded Kash Patel's appointment as FBI director?
3:44–6:45
3
How has the FBI been transformed under Trump’s administration?
6:45–19:46
4
What specific changes did Kash Patel implement upon his arrival?
19:46–28:33
5
What concerns did FBI employees express about Patel's leadership style?
28:33–41:05
Speakers
7 identifiedMore from The Daily
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