When Kash Patel arrived at the FBI as its new director earlier this year, he faced the kind of credibility hurdles his predecessors didn’t have to worry about. If Patel was going to be seen as a serious and capable figure, one who is prepared to help lead federal law enforcement, he would have to invest time and energy into proving his mettle, rolling up his sleeves and doing quality work on behalf of the bureau.
The unqualified former podcast personality and conspiracy theorist has done largely the opposite, careening between a series of avoidable missteps.
The last few weeks, however, have been especially rough.
Since mid-September, Patel has pulled FBI agents off terrorism and child predator cases, for example, to join a crusade to hunt down undocumented immigrants. He soon after announced that he was severing the bureau’s relationships with the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center because right-wing groups and online influencers don’t like them, and firing FBI personnel who took a knee for George Floyd in 2020.
Around the same time, the public learned that Patel fired an agent in training for displaying a gay pride flag on his desk while appointed to a field office in California last year. That coincided with news about the FBI director’s ridiculous challenge coins. (“Patel’s coin does not convey … gravitas,” The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols summarized. “Instead, it says: ‘I am a grown man who has spent way too much time on the internet.’”)
But arguably the lowest of the recent low points was the news about another one of the FBI director’s recent firings. Reuters reported: An FBI agent was relieved of duty for declining to arrange a ‘perp walk’ of the bureau’s former director, James Comey, in front of news media cameras after Comey was federally charged last month, four people briefed on the matter said on Friday. Comey was charged on September 25 with making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation, in a dramatic escalation of President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against his political enemies. This has been confirmed by MSNBC, which reported that an FBI agent in the Washington, D.C., field office really was fired for refusing to arrest and perp walk Comey, the former FBI director. In other words, Patel wanted to disregard Justice Department policy and humiliate Comey after Trump orchestrated the politically motivated indictment. When an agent balked at playing along with this partisan game, the FBI director ended the agent’s career. To be sure, Patel has spent 2025 overseeing a political personnel purge at the bureau, but these new revelations suggest the problem is still getting worse.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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