Bulwark Takes - MAGA Allies SLAM Kash Patel’s Failures at the FBI

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

Tim Miller is joined by former FBI agent and Lawfare fellow Michael Feinberg to discuss Kash Patel’s rocky leadership of after Charlie Kirk’s assassination with confidence dwindling among MAGA loyalists, and how the FBI purges are affecting the success of FBI investigations.

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Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. I exams provided by independent optometrists. Hey, everybody, Tim O'er from the Bulwark here.

Welcome back, Mike Feinberg. He's a former FBI agent. I currently a fellow at Lawfare and wanted to talk to him about, it's been a rough 48 hours for Cash Patel, a current FBI director. I wanted to get his perspective on that. Mike, you are on the podcast after, how should we say it, you got resigned, gently pushed towards resignation? Anyway, a couple of months ago. And we talked about that. Folks can go listen to that full interview.

We'll put a link in the show notes here. But for people who missed it, maybe just give him the elevator. pitch on your story and how you ended up outside the FBI and on this here YouTube channel. Of course. It's not really a unique story at this point in the administration, but essentially Dan Bongino somehow discovered that I was friends with a former FBI counterintelligence official, Pete Struck, who as most people know ended up inadvertently becoming a very public critic of Donald Trump. Once this was discovered, In short order, it was relayed to me by my special agent in charge, Dominique Evans,

that I would not be receiving a number of promotions I was in for, that I should probably steal myself to actually get demoted, and at the very least, I would be subject to polygraphs probing the nature of my relationship with Pete. As much as I love the fiction of Orwell and the films of Terry Gilliam, this was not something I wanted to put myself through. And I was, in all candor, pretty concerned about a lot of the changes that were happening at the FBI under Patel and Bonino to begin with. So I made the decision that while I'm a little bit glib about it now, was and is still pretty heartbreaking for me to leave the organization. Yeah. And one of the things we talked about when we first talked to

It's like, you know, the loss of expertise. And you're not going to gash yourself up. I'll gash you up. You're working on China and, you know, counterterror issues around that. It feels like the kind of person you'd want to have, given the threats we face from China, a bunch of other threats. The example that we've seen now in Utah, where cash has starting to take a lot of heat. And I'm going to get into that in a second. But I'm curious more just what you think about, about what has happened there, and the performance and the potential risks.

Those are a report, Mehtab Syed, who's a Pakistani American. She's a counterterror expert. Yeah, she goes by May. May? Okay, good. So you know May? Casually. We never worked together, but we knew a lot of the same people in common. We overlapped at headquarters briefly, and I actually almost went to go work for her at one point, but got another job before that happened. So I don't know her incredibly well. I know her professional reputation, and it was quite frankly Sterling. She did a lot of counterterrorism operations, both in the northeast of United States and overseas in Pakistan where she was stationed for some time.

She had language abilities that most FBI agents don't. She had experience in the culture because she had actually immigrated here from Pakistan, which I would suspect played a part in why she was ousted. But, yeah, like, look, I also. Seems like the type of person, I guess. Point being, she was supposed to be she would have been the special agent in charge. in Utah overseeing this investigation of the Charlie Kirk assassination, seems like kind of person you'd want to have in there. Yeah. And to be clear, I worked for quite some time with the current special agent in charge.

We overlapped in the D.C. field office. And he is somebody for whom I have nothing but respect in terms of his experience, both in crisis management and his integrity and empathy for other employees. So, like, I don't want my criticism what's going on to reflect. him, but like, yeah, they knew counterterrorism better than almost any other SAC I could think of in the Bureau. And she's exactly the sort of person you would normally want in a situation like the horrific one we just saw for the past few days. Well, Cash has been taking a lot of heat even from allies, which I think is the most interesting part. And I know those telling about how bad it is. I'm going to read some of those in a second. But I'm just curious for you

because some of the stuff, look, occasionally on these sort of situations, I feel like I'm throwing spitballs from the sidelines, but, you know, this isn't my area of expertise. I feel a lot better criticizing somebody's campaign strategy, you know, that's my area of expertise than their leadership over a crisis situation such as this, law enforcement operation. It just seems like objectively, though, he was clownish. But I'm curious as somebody who knows this stuff better, how you assess what we've seen. Yeah, look, I don't think he actively screwed anything up. The investigation in general looks like it was pretty above board. They got the subject relatively quickly. I think it was in 33 hours or so, which, you know,

is pretty good. What I think we should point out, though, is that the way Patel handled being the director of the FBI at this time was a bit of a clown show. You know, he tweeted that the subject was in custody. Then he tweeted that that was a mistake. The subject is not in custody. The person they were questioning was let go. Have you ever seen anything like that? No, that question is pretty simple, but there's actually like a couple points to unpack. First of all, the FBI is supposed to speak through indictments and complaints and arrests. It is not supposed to be opining mid-investigation about ongoing matters. You know, it taints the investigation.

It colors the way witnesses who may not have been interviewed yet are going to respond to things. And it's just sort of unprofessional. The second thing about his commenting is like it's important to remember he had a personal relationship with the victim. And I'm not saying that as a value judgment.

I'm pointing it out because anybody who has the slightest experience in law enforcement would know that when that's the case, you should really be recusing yourself. You should not be taking a heavier hand on the tiller because it's going to call into question why you did certain things. And if it was personally motivated versus operationally not necessitated. Yeah. So you don't have any thoughts just about how he always looks scared with his big eyes? Um, look, I, um, it just doesn't bring confidence to me. I maybe That's not the most important thing? I wear sunglasses maybe if you can't help it.

It's not just that. It's also, and I realize I came on this show with my hair wet. So this is maybe the pot calling the kettle black. But like, the amount of hair gel he uses, like, really hasn't been socially acceptable since the mid-80s. Yeah. That's my biggest. Also, the other goofy thing, again, is like he's giving out the challenge coins with his name on it. He says at the end of the press conference today, I don't have it right in front of it,

but something to the effect of like, to your point about his relationship with Charlie, like, oh, I've got a watch. I'll see you in Valhalla. I'll see you in Valhalla. To my friend Charlie Kirk. Rest now, brother. We have the watch. And I'll see you in Valhalla. That's just not appropriate. It's not just not appropriate. Like if I could go off on a sort of tangent for a second, and here's where I'll throw a spitball. You know, like you don't know this. I spent most of undergrad studying German history and literature. And I'm quite familiar with the concept of Valhalla. It is where warriors, in Central and Northern European mythology went after they were killed in battle. It was a place for people of a martial spirit who gave their lives in defense of their country

or their countrymen or their tribe or some sort of ideal. I'm just going to point out, Cash Patel has never risked his own livelihood or body for any other human being, and the chances of him ever making it into somewhere like Valhalla are probably pretty slim. Kind of the opposite of times.

Okay. So just to prove that it's just not us who are, you know, and I have Trump derangement syndrome. I self-identify you've obviously left the FBI. I said some issues maybe. So in case people are wondering if it's personal. I want to read you a couple quotes from the last 24 hours. Here's Steve Bannon, a close ally of cash, pushed cash for this job.

I don't know why cash flew out there. I don't know why cash flew out there, you know, thousands of miles to give us, hey, working partnerships and our great partnership in Utah. Okay, I got that. No offense to the law enforcement guys in the future of this. The public assumes that you're working together as partnerships. There's certain assumptions when you walk to the microphone of information. We don't need time and time and time again.

Chris Rufo. This is the one that surprised me. Yeah, Chris Rufo, very influential, close to Ron DeSantis, right-wing activist, anti-woke, anti-D-EI, is kind of his claim to fame. He wrote this. I think it's time for Republicans to assess whether Cash Patel is the right man to run the FBI. He performed terribly in the last few days, and it's not clear whether he has the operational expertise to investigate, infiltrate, and disrupt the violent movements of whatever ideology threaten the peace in the United States. Do you know Kyle Serafin?

I don't personally know him, but he was on the squad that I ended up supervising. We missed each other by a few months, but I have heard a lot of stories, some of which have made it to the public, some of which have not. He self, we'll just say this. He self-identifies as MAGA and support of the president. He said this, screw up, moron, most embarrassing thing I've ever seen from an FBI director. I could go on. Yeah, Joe Biggs, a member of the proud boys, made a very similar comment. There's been a real conservative circular firing squad on this.

Yeah. And to me, I mean, I just think that that speaks to, look, in this crowd, you've got to really display either. a lack of loyalty or a lack of incompetence outside of the couple standard deviations of acceptability to get this kind of treatment. Okay. The other thing about Cash on to get you to weigh in on, I did a video on this yesterday. Once again, it was kind of based on reporting. Interesting, in your view, having known these guys, there were three agents that have sued

for, I guess, wrongful termination, essentially, including Brian Driscoll, the Driz, who is the temporary in-charging director for a while. Thank you, acting director, after the resignation of Chris Ray. I guess I'd just like to hear you cook on their lawsuit, what you think about it, whether you learned anything that you didn't expect. Yeah, I could wax philosophic on this lawsuit for hours. I will not, out of respect for both of our times.

It was really bittersweet for me to see. It was very heartening to realize, that there were still leaders in the FBI who were willing to do the right thing by their employees. For those who haven't read the lawsuit, two of the three plaintiffs were fired for refusing to fire subordinates of theirs who had been politically targeted. And the fact that they were willing to do the right thing at the potential loss of their own pensions, livelihood benefits, so on and so forth, really gave me a renewed shot of faith in a good portion of the FBI workforce. On a more personal level, I sort of felt like stitches were being pulled out of a

wound for me, though, because that's exactly what my own SAC chose not to do. So I had this really like weird mix of feelings where nothing but admiration for Steve Jensen and Brian Driscoll and Spencer Evans and just sort of a renewed distaste for how my own field office treated me. I guess I kind of read you this last time, but now this lawsuit is out and it's a little more time has passed. You know, if it was not for this horrible assassination, we wouldn't have known about May really being pushed out. I guess we would have, but it was like in one article, you know what I mean?

It did not get a lot of attention. What is the scope of this, right? Like, I mean, the picture that has changed. Oh, it's huge. It's huge. Look, if you were appointed by Chris Ray to a senior executive position as a division head, whether of a field office or a division in headquarters, chances are, and I don't have the exact percentage, you've already been pushed out.

You were probably given the option to retire before they fired you, but you're no longer there. and you're no longer there out of your own choosing. And if for some reason you made the cut, your days are numbered. They're not doing it all at once because they learned a lot

from the firing of all the U.S. attorneys during the Bush administration a couple decades ago now. And I think they know that if they cleared the decks in one fell swoop, there would be an outcry

including potentially from their own allies in Congress. But if you do a couple every few weeks, it doesn't really make the news. But like the loss of leadership, the loss of subject matter expertise. Like I still even now don't think people outside the government realize how bad it actually is and how long it's going to take us to repair things if and when we get the chance. And for you, like the biggest risks as a result of these changes, or what? I think we saw one of them this week. The Department of Justice, the FBI, has deprioritized domestic terrorism and political extremism

in favor of devoting 20% of the workforce to assisting ICE on immigration matters. That means agents are not building sources among political extremists. they're not able to work their investigations on those subjects with as much alacrity. There are less people at headquarters to help them check off the administrative boxes they need to do to authorize operations. Like, you know, I don't think we can draw a causal chain between all of this to what happened, but there's certainly a correlative relationship. Yeah, and the one of Minnesota, just for example, actually, let's end with that because I'm asking, this is another thing I felt like I was popping off a little bit on. Um, the, the shooter, uh, in the Catholic Church, man shooting in Minnesota a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. School was the Catholic, the church at the school. I had posted and now, um, this is, this is where I'm starting to feel middle aged. It was, it's not on Discord or on 4chan, but like on a spinoff version of one of them, but, uh, posted on one of these sites, like, multiple months, like, I'm going to shoot up this church. I'm going to shoot up this church. I don't, I don't know, like, how that works.

Is there a person at the bureau that's scanning all these fucking message boards? Is that ignored? Is that not? Does that matter? But it is noteworthy. Yes. Yes and no. For domestic terrorism cases, there are real legitimate First Amendment concerns about monitoring social media, even when the views are ones that most people would find absolutely reprehensible.

But at the same time, there are ways to get around that. And if there is a real threat of violence, you are authorized to do certain things. But in order for analysts to really scrub open source social media and various message boards and the like, they need to have time to do so. They need to have the support of their office to do so. And if they instead are writing targeting packages for ICE to arrest grandmothers and children and, deport them to third world countries. They're not able to do what was their previous mission. There are opportunity costs to everything. Unfortunately, the way Patel and Bongino have chosen to run the Bureau, that opportunity cost is an increased likelihood and now a realized likelihood

of domestic terror attacks. I appreciate your expertise as always. Hopefully we don't have to talk to you soon, but I kind of have a feeling we will. So I appreciate it, Mike, and get back to that little baby years. All right. Thanks, man. Have a good day.