Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.

“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. 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.”

“There was from what I learned on a senior conference was that the president had seen video footage or pictures of the raids that were being conducted around The United States and was angry that he did not see the well known FBI flak jackets with the yellow FBI on the back.”

“It showed a lack of understanding of what the bureau at the headquarters level does. And so this was the first instance, I would say, of a pattern that we would see after that of decisions first, and then everybody scramble and figure out how to make it happen later.”

“With Dan Bongino's selection to be his deputy director, I realized in that moment that it was not going to be okay. Dan Bongino struck me as somebody who had really lost his way, particularly some of the most alarming things he would say would get clicks and kinda work their way into algorithms.”

“Most importantly, he's somebody who has spun conspiracy theories about the bureau in the past. He says that Joe Biden rigged the twenty twenty election. He thinks that there were FBI agents involved in planning the January sixth attack on the Capitol, which is part of why Trump picks him.”