Fbi

FBI Director Kash Patel popped up in several news stories on Friday. He does this periodically, like a skin or glandular disorder – a Kash Rash, as it were. Looking as though he’d spent last night consuming the contents of the FBI’s seized-drug storeroom, Patel announced at an airport presser that the FBI had seized former Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding, a “modern-day El Chapo” or Pablo Escobar who was running a multinational drug ring out of Mexico City. That seemed like good news, as did the fact that Patel said that there had been a 210 percent increase in gang takedowns and a reduction in FBI operational expenses in his first year.

For the third time in a week, Minnesota is making national headlines, and for all the wrong reasons. In a massive show of federal force against a resistant sanctuary metropolis, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deployed 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis-St. Paul in the largest immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s history. Against the backdrop of what federal prosecutors described as a nine billion dollar federal fraud scheme centered in Minnesota’s Somali immigrant community, agents have gone door-to-door investigating human trafficking, narcotics and gang activity, and surreptitious employment by illegal aliens.

“We are so excited to be joined by Kash and his beautiful girlfriend Alexis,” said Katie Miller, wife of Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, on this week’s podcast. And there, on the couch next to her, sits FBI Director Kash Patel and Alexis Wilkins, his significant other, a country-music singer and conservative political commentator, a female twenty-something Bob Roberts for our modern age. “So I just want to clarify,” Miller says. “You’re not Jewish.” “I’m not,” Wilkins says, while Patel laughs beside her. “You are not from Israel.” “No.” “So how did we get to are you a Mossad agent?

Kyiv The rumor reverberating around Kyiv is that the FBI has been leaning on Ukrainian anti-corruption police to investigate Zelensky’s inner circle in order to force him to swallow the bitter US peace deal. Trump, as they say, has put the screws, or the feds, on Zelensky. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau – which is unravelling a $100 million war-profiteering scandal that has implicated many of Zelensky’s closest political allies – has denied the accusation point blank, and there’s not a single shred of evidence that it is true.

The FBI has arrested Chauncey Billups, NBA champion, Hall of Famer, and coach of the Portland Trail Blazers for his association in a rigged poker game operated by some of New York City’s most notorious crime family. “Why would Chauncey do it?” the world of sports is asking. He’s already worth tens of millions of dollars. That’s a question for Billups, his attorneys, his God, and, presumably, Blazers ownership to answer. But as someone who regularly plays a lot of low and micro-stakes poker, I have a pretty good idea. The games I play in are monitored by security cameras, with armed guards at the exits in case people get out of line. When I play in World Series of Poker or World Poker Tour events, there are a strict set of rules by which the vast majority of players abide.

The United States Senate Judiciary Committee this week revealed that Joe Biden’s FBI spied on eight Republican Senators and a Republican House of Representative Member in 2023. The underlying FBI record reveals the agency sought telephone tolling data as part of the Arctic Frost investigation that Special Counsel Jack Smith used to concoct an election fraud case against President Donald J. Trump. Although the indictment was ultimately dismissed when the President was re-elected in 2024, Smith expended the resources of the federal government for two years investigating the President in search of a federal crime.

Let the retribution begin. A federal grand jury in the eastern district of Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, has indicted former FBI director James Comey for lying to Congress about leaking classified information to the press. During his four years at the FBI, Comey became a linchpin of the movement among Democrats in Congress and their legacy press supporters to oust Donald Trump during his first term. Trump never forgives and he never forgets.

ICEBlock is an app that uses real-time information to pinpoint the location of ICE agents in the field. Launched in April in response to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, it now boasts more than one million users across the country. Among them, until recently, was self-styled “anti-fascist” sniper Joshua Jahn, who killed one person – a detainee – and critically injured two more at an ICE facility in Dallas. The FBI has discovered that Jahn used the app, or one like it, to track his intended victims. In a handwritten note, Jahn, who took his own life, wrote, "Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror.”ICEBlock claims that its purpose is to help illegal immigrants evade arrest by alerting them to the presence of ICE agents.

Days before the five-year statute of limitations was due to expire, the long arm of the law finally has caught up with the slippery former FBI Director James B. Comey. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has indicted Comey for leaking and lying about his role in the Russian hoax that President Trump’s enemies tried to hang around his head like a noose even before he was inaugurated in 2016.Count one of the federal indictment charges Comey with making a false statement during a September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Specifically, Comey claimed he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding FBI investigations into President Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The morning after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, FBI Director Kash Patel stood in a Utah conference room, the state’s Governor Spencer Cox looking appropriately somber behind him, and uttered these words: “To my friend Charlie Kirk, rest now, brother. We have the watch. And I’ll see you at Valhalla.” A Hindu speaking to a dead Christian in front of a Mormon governor, none of them soldiers, invoking a mythical heaven for Norse warriors: ain’t that America? Yet beyond the absurd and harmless cognitive dissonance, there is a more serious question: does Kash Patel actually “have the watch?

Yesterday, I wrote about the revelations with which Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, electrified the world.  We had all grown up chewing on the Russia Collusion Delusion, and most of us were happy to have that political enormity pass through the usual emunctory processes and be deposited in some far off midden or compost heap.   But Tulsi showed that, however expert we thought ourselves about the subject, that great precautionary motto – "things are always worse than they seem”– was pertinent even here.

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have this week found out the painful way that running the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a lot harder than podcasting. Having spent years on endless shows suggesting that the "Epstein Files" could reveal the Deep State’s darkest secrets, the now Director and Deputy Director of the FBI find themselves insisting that, contrary to what they may have said, Jeffrey Epstein did, in fact, kill himself; that he did not have a list of blackmailable clients; and that he sexually abused more than 1,000 girls pretty much all by himself.Nobody believes that, of course, and Donald Trump’s angry reaction on Tuesday to a reporter who dared to ask about the most famous sex offender of all time, has done nothing to put the conspiracy theories to rest.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the conviction of Douglass Mackey for lack of evidence, remanding his case to a district court for immediate dismissal. The ruling marks a massive victory for shitposters everywhere. For those of you who are not extremely online or deeply obsessed with the Pilgrim’s Progress of First Amendment rights in America, Mackey is the online figure formerly known as “Ricky Vaughn” whom the Biden FBI arrested in 2021 for a tweet he posted in 2016 making fun of Hillary Clinton and spreading satirical information about “texting to vote.” The government said he was using "social media to spread disinformation relevant to the impending 2016 Presidential Election.

Most Catholics were well aware of Joe Biden’s, at best, tepid observation of Catholic teachings as president.But even they will be aghast after a new report from the Senate Judiciary Committee uncovered the true breadth of a crackdown by the FBI – during the Biden administration – on “radical traditionalist” Catholics. In 2023, an FBI memo called for sources to be developed within parishes that offer the Latin Mass and online Catholic communities for the purpose of “threat mitigation.” At the time, the FBI retracted the memo after an outcry and said it was an isolated incident out of one field office. Now Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has discovered new evidence that casts serious doubt on that narrative.

Let's sit down and have a talk about James Comey, America's tallest teenage girl. Typically the conversation around the nation's most famous former FBI director focuses on political gripes – whether his grandstanding, poorly timed announcements that Democrats still blame for Hillary Clinton's loss, or his back-channeling conniving debriefings Republicans still blame for Russiagate. But nowadays, whenever Comey pops up in the algorithm, it seems to be because he's just so deeply weird. His latest debacle: a social media posting of seashells spelling out "86 47", a threat which prompted immediate controversy which Comey attempted to brush off as naivete. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

The 60th Presidential Inaugural Ceremony Viewing and Parade at the Capitol One Arena was an event of juxtaposition. The piercing cold endured by those who waited for hours, in weather so frigid it forced the day’s festivities indoors, contrasted sharply with the heat and energy that filled the stadium during the celebration of their political victory.The red carpet and the caps of the crowd blended with the blue lights above, mirroring not only the colors of the nation’s flag but also the hue of the 47th president’s inaugural tie.