FBI officials say bureau has 'no legal authority' to arrest fleeing Texas Democrats: MSNBC

A boast by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that the FBI will intercede and take into custody Texas Democratic lawmakers who have fled the state to avoid a controversial gerrymandering bill, was shot down by MSNBC's Ken Dilanian on Thursday morning.

On X, Cornyn wrote that FBI Director Kash Patel, "... has responded to my request to assist state & local law enforcement locate the runaway Texas House Democrats and investigate potential offenses. Thank you Director Patel for your swift response & action!"

According to Dilanian, Cornyn's comments should be taken with a grain of salt.

As he explained to host Anna Cabrera, "Well, the FBI has not responded to our inquiries asking that very question. So I think, first of all, we need to greet Cornyn's announcement with a bit of skepticism, given that he is in the most difficult primary battle of his career and is trying to appeal to far-right Republicans in Texas."

"But look, the experts, current and former FBI and Justice Department officials I've spoken to about this in the last half hour have uniformly said there is no grounds whatsoever, no legal authority for the FBI to assist local authorities in locating, for example, Texas legislators, most of whom are believed to be in Illinois. They would need a crime to have been committed, a federal crime, to have some kind of nexus to use their formidable surveillance powers."

He later added, "So it will be interesting to see whether the FBI later today actually answers our questions and describes what, if anything, they plan to do here."

"But what my sources are saying is a there's no grounds for this, but if the FBI is doing anything, it's very troubling because it suggests that the FBI, if they are doing something pursuant to this, has become kind of a Republican Praetorian Guard here because, again, no jurisdiction, no legal nexus, no federal crime committed. And so there are rules about when the FBI can use their vast surveillance powers, and they do not seem to be implicated in this case."

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