Director Patel is taking fire from an ex-FBI podcaster

 Kash Patel's tenure has not been a smooth one.  Now this.

Steven Jensen and other agents filed [a lawsuit] against [Director Kash] Patel and the FBI this month alleging wrongful termination.

[...]

In April, [Patel] promoted [Jensen] to head the prestigious Washington field office. Almost immediately, Patel and his deputy director, Dan Bongino, began to get heat from Trump supporters online over the decision. In social media posts tagging Patel and Bongino, critics let the image-conscious pair know that Jensen had been involved in the FBI’s January 6th investigations

No voice on the right was louder than an ex-FBI agent turned conservative podcaster named Kyle Seraphin. In a steady stream of social media posts, Seraphin dogged Patel’s management of the bureau, including over Jensen’s promotion.

It apparently irritated Patel to no end. According to Jensen, Patel suggested that Jensen sue Seraphin for defamation and even recommended some lawyers.

[...]

In a matter of months, Seraphin has become a mischievous bogeyman for Patel’s operation, using his experience, sources within the agency, and pugnacious online persona to constantly goad the director.

[...]

In Jensen’s telling, Patel said a defamation lawsuit would get some pressure off of Patel. Jensen ultimately declined to go after Seraphin. He told Patel that he was “unconcerned with the viewpoints of online personalities.”

[...]

Elsewhere in the suit are other data points. For example, the head of the Las Vegas field office was told to stop posting on social media and ultimately fired after being criticized by Seraphin.

[...]

Beyond the lawsuit, there are even more examples [of Patel's problems]. The New York Times reported last week that Patel fired another agent at the bureau after Seraphin falsely claimed that agent was central to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid.

“Are you really listening to this guy?” former FBI acting director Brian Driscoll asked Patel about Seraphin at one point, according to the Times report. Driscoll is another of the three fired personnel in the lawsuit against Patel.

[...]

The FBI declined a request for comment. But Seraphin seems to be reveling in the idea that he’s got Patel spooked. He told me he was happy to point out Patel’s “incompetent, bumbling actions” for the whole world to see, and agreed that he seems to live in Patel’s head.

“It very much appears that he understands that he’s way out of his depth,” Seraphin said.

  The Bulwark

Evidenced in his Senate hearing.

[Seraphin] was suspended in 2022 in a dispute over the bureau’s COVID rules. He then rose to prominence as a right-wing whistleblower after complaining to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) about the FBI’s treatment of parents at school-board meetings.

I missed that story.

Seraphin was actually once on friendly terms with Patel. He says he received $10,000 from Patel’s “Kash Foundation” nonprofit in 2022 when he was “essentially homeless” after leaving the FBI. And he said he met Patel in person a handful of times, in addition to also appearing on Bongino’s podcast.

If he has a primary grievance with Patel, he insisted, it is that Patel hasn’t shaken up the bureau enough.

[...]

Patel himself hasn’t sued Seraphin, but someone else in his circle eventually did: Last month, Patel’s girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, sued the podcaster for suggesting that she’s a Mossad agent “honeypot” out to control Patel and cover up the Jeffrey Epstein case. Wilkins is being represented by Jesse Binnall, Patel’s personal lawyer and a member of his nonprofit’s board.

For his part, Seraphin said he meant Wilkins was a “honeypot” in a positive way.

“It’s kind of a compliment, actually,” he said.

[...]

In addition to tangling with Patel, he has also tweaked another prominent right-wing figure. In July, he was deposed in undercover right-wing video operative James O’Keefe’s legal battle with O’Keefe’s former Project Veritas nonprofit, after Seraphin posted leaked lewd messages between O’Keefe and his girlfriend, a star of the Netflix reality show Selling the OC.

The deposition video, which O’Keefe posted online, shows Seraphin gleefully taunting O’Keefe and his lawyer, describing O’Keefe as being of “low moral character.” At one point, O’Keefe’s lawyer asked Seraphin what he meant when he posted that O’Keefe should “FOAD.”

“It’s commonly understood to mean ‘F Off and Die,’” Seraphin responded.

What world are we living in?

The Drizz got defenestrated

 Actually, I'm surprised it hadn't already happened.

You remember the Drizz.

We salute you, Drizz.

The FBI purge and resistance hero: The Drizz

FBI officials may not permit their agency to go gentle into the dictatorial night.

Over the weekend, in a blizzard of activity [...] , FBI officials moved to resist the attempted coup.

Though he had carried out the order to decapitate the bureau’s top executives the day before, on Friday acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll reportedly refused to agree to fire certain agents involved with January 6th cases, and was trying to block a mass purge of such agents. In a message to staff Saturday, Driscoll reminded FBI agents of their rights to “due process and review in accordance with existing policy and law,” and emphasized “That process and our intent to follow it have not changed.”

  The Bulwark

The story of Brian Driscoll (who calls himself  Drizz) is that there were two names proposed for acting director and deputy director to the FBI. Driscoll was to be deputy, but the ever-incompetent Trump administration inadvertently exchanged the two names and advertised Driscoll as acting director. Apparently, it would have been too embarrassing to admit the error.

The FBI Agents Association sent a memo to employees over the weekend to remind them of their civil service protections. The memo urged them not to resign or to offer to resign, and recommended that agents respond to one question in the survey they’ve been instructed to answer: “I have been told I am ‘required to respond’ to this survey, without being afforded appropriate time to research my answers, speak with others, speak with counsel or other representation.”

[...]

Then on Sunday the top agent at the FBI’s New York field office, James Dennehy, wrote in an email to his staff: “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy. . . . Time for me to dig in.”

Yes.

Loving The Drizz.  His letter to FBI agents ended with "take care of each other."

When I first saw this picture, I said he looks like he should be named General Beauregard.  Recently I heard someone on a podcast say he looks like he just stepped out of a saloon.

Driscoll, the acting director of the F.B.I., has become an improbable symbol of quiet resistance toward the Justice Department’s campaign to single out F.B.I. employees who investigated the Jan. 6 riot.

[...]

Even if he was not meant to be leading the agency, he has defended the rank-and-file. His refusal at the time to furnish the names of employees, as top Justice Department officials desired, and his insistence that a formal review process be put in place, has spurred widespread support for Mr. Driscoll.

[...]

Mr. Driscoll had been in charge of the Newark office for only about a week before he moved to the director’s suite on the seventh floor of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington, thrust into the middle of a political firestorm.

[...]

Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Driscoll as unflappable. He was a special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service in San Diego before joining the F.B.I. in 2007. His first assignment was in the New York office, the largest outpost in the bureau, where agents form powerful alliances and deep connections.

In 2011, he passed rigorous tryouts and was selected to the F.B.I.’s Hostage Rescue Team, a highly trained unit formed in the years after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

[...]

Rescue team operators, including Mr. Driscoll, have repeatedly deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq during the wars there, embedding with Navy SEAL and Delta Force commandos.

Former members of the rescue team said that Mr. Driscoll was dispatched in 2013 to Alabama, where they successfully rescued a 5-year-old boy who had been taken hostage in a bunker. He was a gunfighter on the blue squadron.

  NYT

Perfect: just stepped out of a saloon.

Indeed, Mr. Driscoll took part in the arrest of Samuel Fisher, an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, in Manhattan two weeks after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.

[...]

Mr. Fisher was pardoned by Mr. Trump.Chris O’Leary, a former top counterterrorism agent in New York who worked with Mr. Driscoll, pointed to his experience.

“What the F.B.I. needs most is a principled leader, and we have one right now in Brian Driscoll,” Mr. O’Leary said.

Still rescuing hostages. His fellow agents.

UPDATE 08/08/2025:  The Drizz has been fired.

MSNBC: “Brian Driscoll, the former acting FBI director who refused to carry out Trump admin’s plans for mass firing of J6 agents, sent a message to colleagues: “Last night I was informed that tomorrow will be my last day in the FBI. I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I currently have no answers. No cause has been articulated at this time. Please know that it has been the honor of my life to serve alongside each of you. Thank you for allowing me to stand on your shoulders throughout it all. Our collective sacrifices for those we serve is, and will always be, worth it. I regret nothing. You are my heroes, and I remain in your debt.”

  Meidas Touch

We wish him well and prosperous, as we thank him for his invaluable service.

Kudos to Nick Gottlieb

This is what they should all be doing.

Jesus Christ.  Have mercy

Kudos also to The Drizz.

Trump 2.0 - capture the justice and investigative arms of government

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Several top FBI executives promoted by former Director Christopher Wray were told Thursday to resign or retire and that they will be demoted or reassigned if they don’t leave.

The purge of senior officials includes about a half-dozen “executive assistant directors,” who are some of the bureau’s top managers overseeing criminal, national security and cyber investigations. They are career civil servants, meaning they can't be fired without cause.

  NBC

Apparently they can.

A current FBI official told NBC News that the move would be “hugely disruptive,” while a former official who is talking to people at the FBI said there’s a lot of anger because the affected employees aren’t considered political figures in any way.

That's why they're being removed.

Trump fired 18 inspectors general last week, including watchdogs for the State, Defense and Labor departments and the Department of Health and Human Services.

[...]

The Trump administration has also fired career attorneys at the Justice Department who were involved in prosecuting him, raising alarms over his making good on threats of retribution against those who have challenged his conduct.

UPDATE 08:42 pm:

So I assume he got shitcanned.  Also, that's not a look I would have expected to see on a Feeb.  He looks like someone named General Beauregard.