A former federal prosecutor slammed FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday for making the same mistake he made during a previous high-profile shooting.
Glenn Kirschner, a former Deputy U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., made the comment on a recent episode of his podcast, "Justice Matters," calling Patel's announcement "premature" about a person of interest who was detained in the mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday, which left two students dead and injured nine others.
Authorities announced on Sunday that they had detained a person allegedly connected to the shooting on Sunday, but let him go about 19 hours later, according to reports.
Kirschner said Patel's response was reminiscent of how the FBI handled the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
"It looks like FBI Director Kash Patel is either unwilling or unable to learn from his mistakes because in yet another high-profile shooting, old Kash just got it wrong again," Kirschner said.
Kirschner cited an article from The New Republic arguing that Patel's "blunder" in the Brown University case "reeks of the same overeagerness that led to this same outcome in the Charlie Kirk shooting."
"Why is this a significant blunder?" Kirschner asked. "Well, first of all, he made clear by inaccurately relaying that they've got the bad guy in custody ... that the FBI screwed up because they got the wrong guy holed up in that motel room."
"Two, he inaccurately signaled to the people that the coast is clear," he continued, adding, "that was wrong, and that's dangerous."
"Three, he's disclosing facts to the public that the public doesn't need to know," Kirschner added. "The public has no right to know.
And the public shouldn't know ... You're feeding them facts that they wouldn't otherwise have ... You don't gratuitously put facts, evidence, information that the public doesn't need to know and has no right to know because you're really infecting the investigation."
