The director of the FBI is absolutely fuming after MSNBC fact-checked him on the basic rules of the agency that oversees his bureau.
“BREAKING: MSNBC still an ass clown factory of disinformation,” Kash Patel furiously wrote on X Saturday. “Same circus animals that slobbered all over perp walks of [Roger] Stone, [Peter] Navarro], [Steve] Bannon…”
“MSNBC has no facts and no audience,” he raged on. “In this [FBI], follow the chain of command or get relieved.”
It was revealed on Friday that Patel reportedly fired one of his agents for refusing to arrange a “perp walk” for former FBI Director James Comey, who is currently facing charges for supposedly lying to a Senate Committee about media leaks from inside the agency on its investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections.
Patel had reportedly wanted Comey’s “perp walk,” where the accused is paraded in front of reporters, to be carried out by “large, beefy” agents. His decision to fire the official was first reported by Reuters, and an MSNBC journalist later tweeted they had confirmed those reports.
The FBI director’s comments were directed at Barb McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Law and former United States Attorney, who had tweeted in response to the MSNBC journalist that “DOJ policy prohibits ‘perp walks’, in which arrestees are paraded before the cameras.”
Comey’s indictment was announced just days after Donald Trump publicly called for legal action against Comey, prompting outcry from critics who warn the charges represent only the first stage in a now rapidly accelerating campaign of retribution against the president’s political foes.
The Justice Department’s guidelines on media relations are publicly available. Under Section 1-7.610 of the Justice Manual, available via the department’s website and entitled ‘Concerns of Prejudice’, regulations indicate that “DOJ personnel should not encourage or assist news media in photographing or televising a person held in custody.”
The same manual also indicates that department personnel, “with the prior approval of the appropriate United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, may assist the news media in recording or reporting on a law enforcement activity.”
This would appear to suggest that if a perp walk were indeed to be staged in Comey’s case, it would not fall under the remit of Patel as FBI chief, but instead either the relevant U.S. Attorney—in this instance, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan—or a DOJ division chief ultimately answerable to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Justice Department for comment on this story.
