Bulwark Takes - Kash Patel Allegedly Lied in Confirmation Hearing Over FBI Firings

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Tim Miller breaks down the whistleblower report alleging Kash Patel’s involvement in firings at the FBI, which contradicts his testimony at his confirmation hearing that he was not aware of any terminations associated with investigations.

Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. We've got more breaking news and I think this one's the biggest story of the day. A whistleblower has come forward to say that FBI Director-Nominee Kash Patel was directing the firings that we've seen at the Bureau of Agents that were involved in the investigations into Donald Trump and other top-level people at the Bureau. We discussed this, these firings and the implications with Andrew Wiseman in another video. If you missed that a while back, I'd recommend going back and checking that out. He was a former general counsel of the FBI. But the reason why this is a doozy, if the whistleblower statements are true. And I think there's good reason to believe they are, is that cash Patel,

it would mean that cash Patel perjured himself when he was asked about this directly during his confirmation hearing. And when this Q and a happened, my Spidey sense went up immediately because it just, it just beggared belief that, that there would be a purge at the FBI, that some advisory team would come in and recommend a bunch of high-level firings, and that the person that Trump nominated to run the bureau wouldn't have been involved in that. It didn't make any sense to believe, like, that that could have been true. And, and the fact that, that Cash lied, in my opinion, lied about other things during that

hearing. I mean, again, it's, you know, hard to imagine that, you know, he wasn't involved in conversations with Trump about the pardons, which is another thing that he said so who knows i mean i guess maybe but it just doesn't it doesn't really pass the smell test is i guess way to put it but um i want to show you because credit to senator cory booker uh he asked this question in a very direct manner almost i don't know if cory's spidey sense was up as well, or if maybe they had a sense that this was coming, he really cornered Cash on this question of whether he was involved in the hirings. I want to watch that clip right now. Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination,

FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations? I'm not aware of that, Senator. I'm not aware of that, Senator. I'm not aware of any Senator. I mean, that was a very clear question. Straightforward. Are you aware of any efforts to punish agents who were involved in the investigations into Trump? I was not aware of any Senator. So that is what he said during the hearing after a really smart question from Cory Booker.

Now let's go to what we are learning from the whistleblower. We're going to a story here from the Washington Post. The Washington Post pegs a story to a letter put out by Dick Durbin, who's a ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. In the letter, he says that there was a January 29th meeting between FBI's acting director, Brian Driscoll, and a member of this director's advisory team that I mentioned earlier. At this meeting with Driscoll, the advisory team arrived with a list of names. Durbin said this list was seen by multiple FBI leaders, and they understood it to be a collection of, quote, people in the crosshairs. The senator said he'd reviewed notes taken during a meeting that same day between top FBI leadership and acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. you know, really the central figure from the legal side in advancing these purges,

not just the FBI, but the DOJ and inspectors general and elsewhere. So Emil Bove was this very key figure at the DOJ, was having a meeting with FBI leadership. And Bove, according to Durbin, according to this whistleblower, told the meeting attendees that he'd received multiple phone calls the night before from Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff, urging the swift removal of employees whom Patel had targeted for termination. KP wants movement at FBI, one attendee purportedly wrote in the notes Durbin reviewed. Let's do that again. KP, Kash Patel, wants movement at the FBI. We have here, according to my sources, Mr. Patel is receiving information from within the FBI from a member of the director's advisory team. The senator wrote in his letter to the inspector general.

It's interesting. The one Inspector General Trump kept was the Inspector General that has oversight over the FBI because he was happy about a Horowitz Inspector General report against Comey and some of the other officials he didn't like. So Trump liked this guy because he had put out some reports against some deep state officials he didn't like. And so he kept him. So we'll see if that comes back to bite him. But anyway, in this letter to Horowitz, again, according to the source, it says that Patel provides direction to Stephen Miller, who related to acting Deputy Attorney General Boeve, and that each member had represented to one or more officials at the Bureau that they had been in direct contact with Mr. Patel. Again, at some point, this is obvious, right? It's like, really? Like they were just going rogue? They hadn't talked to Cash?

They couldn't wait two weeks? They're just going to go start firing top officials at the FBI without telling him? Like put yourself in Cash's shoes. Maybe they fired seven top guys and Cash liked one of them. Even if you're in Cash's shoes and you're being corrupt, you know, maybe you liked one of them, right? You wouldn't go do this and have this broad purge of key people at the Bureau without talking to the person that was nominated to lead the Bureau. It just didn't make any sense. Their story didn't make any sense from the start.

And it seems like the reason it didn't make any sense from the start and uh it seems like the reason it didn't make any sense from the start is because it wasn't true and that patel was involved um and that he was uh telling bove and and the people on the fbi advisory board uh who he wanted to be removed from the bureau so uh we'll see how this shakes out. The hearing for Patel had been pushed back because the Democrats, I assume, were kind of gathering information about this and the Democrats had asked for it to be pushed back. So we're going to have a vote on him possibly by as soon as the end of this week. We'll see if there are additional delays, but it's a pretty, it's pretty interesting breaking news story to say the least. The idea that the incoming director of the FBI would have

potentially perjured himself in testimony about firing underlings at the FBI or about his involvement in the firing of underlings at the FBI out of retribution on behalf of the president. I guess at this point, there's not a lot of hope that these Republican senators actually care whether Trump is, you know, going to enact retribution against his foes within the government. It seems like the Republican Party is pretty much fully on board with that. But I do wonder if any of these Republicans might, you know, feel a tinge of concern about act responsibly at some level, whether I could in good conscience put in place at the head of the FBI, somebody that came in front of my committee and just bald faced lied to my face, not about a random thing, not about something from his past, but about his plans to purge the Bureau. Um, to me, that would seem like that is somebody that you could not trust, that you

could not entrust with a position of public responsibility as great as FBI director. Whether any of these Republicans stir themselves from their slumber enough to get outraged about that remains to be seen. You certainly won't win any money betting on Republicans to show some spine. But I do think that Kash Patel has created some trouble for himself. And, you know, the conventional wisdom for a while is that, you know, he was on a glide path to confirmation and Tulsi Gabbard was the one that maybe some Republicans would try to stand in the way of. And now I think we've seen that flipped. We'll see Tulsi Gabbard confirmed before Patel, certainly. I still suspect that Patel will be confirmed, but I think there'll be much more to come in this story. And I'll be covering this at greater length tomorrow on the podcast

with one of the reporters who is on this beat. So look forward to you back here then.