Ex-GOP rep exposes one trick Kash Patel resorts to when he's under fire
Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) tore into FBI Director Kash Patel's testimony to the Senate on MS NOW as it unfolded on Tuesday afternoon.
"It is really difficult watching these hearings because it feels like the lawmakers are living in two separate realities," said anchor Katy Tur. "There's the one where Kash Patel is a man facing all of these very serious allegations about his competence. There's the one where we are witnessing politically-motivated investigations into Donald Trump's perceived enemies. And there's the one on the other side where the FBI has never been doing a better job, never been more effective, and is cleaning up the political mess that past administrations have made. It's really confounding."
Riggleman, who previously advised the January 6 Select Committee, agreed — and had a few thoughts of his own.
"The first thing I noticed, as soon as he gets in trouble, he paints himself as a martyr," said Riggleman. "And that's the first thing I notice when somebody is doing this type of this sort of trying to bob and weave, is that as soon as somebody says, hey, you've done this, what did you look at? My placard. It's one of the weakest. Immediately. You know, we're not talking about your placard. Obviously you don't have a good answer for what I just asked you. I don't care about your placard."
"Second thing, past performance is indicative of future performance," he continued. "Kash Patel doesn't tell the truth, Katy. And I think that's the thing that's interesting to me, is that the first thing I'm going to ask, well, you said you were in Italy because China, I mean, Italy had China's CCP lead hacker, you know, in custody. Well, if he's in custody, why are you there? And if it was so important for you to be there, why were you drinking with the U.S. Hockey Team? Because shouldn't you be actually on watch if it was that important? That is a commonsense follow-up question that should be a bit of a face-smasher."
"And the other thing, too, is I'm going to believe Brian Driscoll over Kash Patel any day," said Riggleman. "And so when you're looking at this, it's almost like this sane washing sort of just everybody's all kind and quiet. We have an administration out of control. When he talks about decentralization. And you look at these statistics, where are those actually baseline numbers coming from? What are your sources on that? Every time he says something like, well, I would like for the exhibit, I want to see the sources on what you just said, because right now we're not seeing these exact numbers."
"And so I watch these individuals, I don't know if their staffers aren't preparing them with questions to a law enforcement liaison," he added. "If they don't have an FBI liaison that they can call out immediately, they should be calling everybody there. And as soon as he talks about Iran. Oh, for goodness sake. Right. Oh, you're oh, so you've backed into the fact that there's Iranian sleeper cells. Is that what you're alluding to? Who are they? What are their names? What are the names of the people that weren't fired? If you said they were fired, how many people do you have there now? And don't they have a list of the names of the people that were terminated? That's the first thing they should bring up."
"So, Katy, you've noticed it, you've identified it," Riggleman concluded. "This is actually — the sanewashing ridiculousness is hard for me to, it's really hard for me to watch."
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