Trump Man for FBI Head May Have Already Started Purge At FBI and Commited Perjury
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The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday accused Kash Patel, President Trump’s nominee for F.B.I. director, of improperly directing a wave of firings at the bureau before being confirmed.
In a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois cited “highly credible information from multiple sources” that suggested Mr. Patel had been personally involved in covertly orchestrating a purge of career officials at the F.B.I.
“This alleged misconduct is beyond the pale and must be investigated immediately,” Mr. Durbin wrote to the independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz.
The accusation comes as the committee prepares to vote Thursday on whether to send Mr. Patel’s nomination to the Senate floor. Mr. Durbin said that if the allegations were true, then the acting No. 2 at the Justice Department, Emil Bove, fired career civil servants “solely at the behest of a private citizen,” and also that Mr. Patel “may have perjured himself” at his confirmation hearing last month.
Representatives for the Justice Department, the White House and Mr. Patel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Durbin sent the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, on Tuesday. He is expected to deliver a speech on the Senate floor about the matter.
In his letter, Mr. Durbin recounted a meeting between Mr. Bove, who has helped spearhead mass firings of Justice Department prosecutors, and F.B.I. leadership. Mr. Bove supposedly told the bureau officials that Stephen Miller, a White House aide, was pressuring him on Mr. Patel’s behalf to move more quickly in firing senior career officials at the bureau.
Mr. Durbin cited verbal accounts from “multiple sources” and quoted what he described as contemporaneous meeting notes as further corroboration. Mr. Durbin’s letter said the notes read: “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ.”
Mr. Durbin did not identify his sources, but from the context, they did not appear to be direct witnesses to interactions involving Mr. Patel or Mr. Miller, but rather people at the F.B.I. who heard, or perhaps heard about, what Mr. Bove had supposedly said.
In Senate testimony last month, Mr. Patel said that he was “not aware” of any Trump administration plans to fire F.B.I. officials associated with investigations into Mr. Trump. Mr. Patel also told the senators, “I don’t know what’s going on right now over there.”
But as a further reason to question Mr. Patel’s testimony, Mr. Durbin said members of a newly established group of Trump political appointees at the F.B.I. have kept Mr. Patel informed. Each member of that group, known as the F.B.I. director’s advisory team, Mr. Durbin said, had told one or more F.B.I. officials before Mr. Patel’s confirmation hearing on Jan. 30 that they had been in direct contact with him.
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The referral to Mr. Horowitz comes after Mr. Trump summarily fired 17 inspectors general across the executive branch. Mr. Horowitz has so far been spared, intensifying the stakes of opening any investigation.
A series of reassignments, forced transfers and ousters across the Justice Department — including firing all prosecutors who had worked on the two criminal cases against Mr. Trump — prompted lawmakers to press Mr. Patel during his hearing about whether the F.B.I. would be subject to a similar shake-up.
Hours after Mr. Patel’s testimony, word began to emerge that about half a dozen of the F.B.I.’s most senior leaders had been told they would be fired within days if they did not retire or resign. A day later, an all-staff memo to the F.B.I. said that Mr. Bove had demanded their ouster, along with the names of all agents who helped investigate events related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Mr. Bove had served as one of Mr. Trump’s criminal defense lawyers before Mr. Trump made him the acting deputy attorney general, putting him in the unusual position of overseeing prosecutors he had just opposed in court.
Mr. Durbin recounted what he described as two meetings on the day before Mr. Patel’s testimony.
On Jan. 29, the acting leaders of the F.B.I., Brian Driscoll and Robert C. Kissane, convened a meeting at which they warned that “a lot of names were people in the crosshairs” and that a group of top career supervisors must retire or be fired, it said.
That meeting had been prompted, the letter said, by one earlier that day between the top F.B.I. officials and Trump administration appointees at the Justice Department.
At that earlier meeting, Mr. Durbin said in his letter, Mr. Bove had revealed who was orchestrating the push, informing the F.B.I. leaders that he had “received multiple calls from Stephen Miller the night before. Mr. Miller was pressuring him because Mr. Patel wanted the F.B.I. to remove targeted employees faster as D.O.J. had already done with prosecutors,” according to the letter.
The contemporaneous notes cited by Mr. Durbin as corroboration appear to be from this earlier meeting.
Mr. Driscoll and Mr. Kissane apparently resisted Mr. Bove’s demands, leading him to instruct them two days later to tell senior leaders that they faced termination, and to demand they turn over a list of all agents and analysts who participated in the investigations related to the riot. Mr. Driscoll revealed that demand in the memo to F.B.I. employees later that day.
Mr. Bove, in his own memo to the bureau work force on Feb. 5, accused the F.B.I. leaders of “insubordination,” saying he had broadened his request after Mr. Driscoll and Mr. Kissane “refused to comply” with multiple requests to help him identify the “core team” of investigators in Washington.
Mr. Durbin warned of the potentially deleterious effects of mass dismissals and reassignments across the bureau.
“The leadership and experience vacuum created by these actions has greatly weakened the F.B.I.’s ability to protect the country from numerous national security threats and has made Americans less safe,” he said.
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