The weaponization of the FBI under the Trump administration and Director Kash Patel is entering territory America has never seen before, MS NOW justice correspondent Ken Dilanian told anchor Katy Tur on Wednesday.
This comes after bombshell allegations from Patel's acting predecessor, Brian Driscoll, that Patel is "padding" FBI statistics to make his leadership look more effective than it actually is.
"Ken, how significant is it to hear directly, hear these allegations directly from the former acting ... FBI director?" asked Tur.
"It was striking, Katy ... this is a person that Donald Trump, the Trump administration, picked to run the FBI before Kash Patel could be confirmed. And it was quite striking," said Dilanian.
"Look, we've read these allegations in the lawsuit that Brian Driscoll and some of his colleagues have filed, but he's such a colorful character," Dilanian continued. "And by the way, he is revered inside the FBI. He's done a lot of really interesting things in his career, and he's loved. And he was so, he — he was just very plainspoken and colorful and, you know, just explaining that he was not going to knuckle under to what he thought was improper political pressure. He was willing to go and work for Donald Trump and run the FBI. But then as soon as those demands started, for example, for the names of all the agents that worked on January 6th cases and other — what he thought were just improper requests or being made of him, he just wasn't willing to do it."
"And he's alleging, of course, that, you know, Kash Patel told him that his job security was essentially based on his political leanings and that he needed to show loyalty to the president," he added. "We've never seen that in the modern history of the relationship between the White House and the FBI. Even in the [J. Edgar] Hoover days, that wasn't how it worked. And certainly post-Watergate, it doesn't work that way. And it's really just it's sort of shocking to hear it come from Brian Driscoll's mouth in such stark terms."
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