Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel sent an ominous message to former FBI Director James Comey during an appearance on “Special Report” with Fox News Channel’s Brett Baier, commenting both on Comey’s “86 47” social media post and Comey’s claims that Patel and Bongino are mismanaging the FBI.
As background, Comey rose back into the public view when he took to Instagram to post a picture from the beach of seashells arranged to say “8647,” which, given that “86” can be slang for “assassinate” or “take out,” many Americans took to be a threat against the life of President Trump.
Then, with Comey back in the public eye, Deputy Director Bongino revealed that an entire room full of missing evidence from the Comey era had been found in the FBI building, which many took to show malfeasance or misfeasance on former Director Comey’s part.
In any case, Director Patel, weighing in on the Comey problem, said, “You know, the FBI is bigger than any leader it’s ever had or ever will have. And James Comey is a private citizen, and he can walk around the beach and talk about seashells and Crayola crayons for all I care about and talk about how we’re the conspiracy theorists.”
Continuing, the FBI Director told Baier that Comey clearly acted illegally in the Russia Hoax “criminal conspiracy,” saying, “But I’ll just remind the American people of one thing. When that man was the leader of the FBI, he perpetrated the largest criminal conspiracy, packaged political information from overseas, took it to a federal FISA court, and illegally surveilled a political opponent.”
Using that to tie into his counter-attack on Comey, who had told the media that both Patel and Bongino were incompetent heads of the FBI who would do a disastrously bad job in running it, Patel then told Baier, “So, I won’t be lectured on how to run this FBI from that man.”
Comey, for his part, had said that both Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino needed to be “guided” by the Deep State hacks in the bureau, saying, “I hope the career people are able to support the director and the deputy director. There are lots of people in the FBI who know what they’re doing. I hope these two guys are letting them guide them.”
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He further added, attacking the new leadership of the bureau that he destroyed the public’s confidence in during the Trump-Clinton election, “Nothing in their life or their career gives me confidence that they know anything about leading an organization like that. And so, I would have serious doubts.”
Patel replied to Comey’s comments by saying, “If [Comey] wants to go after me? No problem. I’ve been living rent free in that guy’s head for years, and that’s just a bonus.” He added, “Do you know how many copycats we’ve had to investigate as a result of that beachside venture from the former director? Do you know how many agents I’ve had to take offline from chasing down child sex predators, fentanyl traffickers, terrorists, because everywhere across this country, people are popping up on social media?”
He then said, “[They] think that a threat to the life of the president of the United States is a joke and they can do it because he did it? That’s what I’m having to deal with every single day. And that’s what I’m having to pull my agents and analysts off because he thought it was funny to go out there and make a political statement.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: By Pete Souza – P061216PS-0013, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49408640