Running the FBI? Kash Patel believes his job is getting attention

If there was one word to describe most of FBI Director Kash Patel‘s public appearances since Charlie Kirk‘s tragic assassination on Sept. 10, it would be “giddy.” Despite claiming the deceased right-wing influencer as a friend, Patel’s affect has been that of a reality TV game show host excitedly hyping this week’s big reveal.

“The screwdriver that was found on top of the roof. And the towel on which the firearm was found. The ravine that I walked myself, along with the rooftop. I said we cannot waste a second on this DNA analysis,” Patel breathlessly declared Monday night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. “And we announce today on Fox that the DNA was a positive match for the suspect in question.”

One almost expected him to pull back a curtain to display a surprise guest.

The hype was pointless. Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old suspected of killing Kirk, was arrested on Sept. 11 after reportedly admitting to the crime. While DNA may be helpful supporting evidence in court, it’s hardly earth-shattering news as presented by Patel. The main purpose of his gimmick was not to commend the hard work of FBI agents and Utah State Police officers. It was to draw attention to Patel himself.

Carnival barker — that’s how the FBI director appears to see his job. After all, the former far-right podcaster was appointed by President Donald Trump not because of his (threadbare) crime-fighting experience, but seemingly to appease the conspiracy theorist constituency of the president’s MAGA base. Patel’s Fox appearance would be tasteless camera-hogging for a top law enforcement official at any time. But it was especially disturbing given the FBI director’s alleged friendship with Kirk and the level of seriousness with which Patel claimed the bureau led the manhunt for Kirk’s assassin.

From the moment Kirk died, Patel’s approach to the case has been characterized more by his boundless need for attention than by concerns about getting justice for Kirk. The director’s rush to post on X about the case led him to falsely declare that “the subject” had been arrested on the day of the shooting, just before Patel dashed off to dinner at a fancy Manhattan restaurant. Ninety minutes later, he sheepishly retracted the statement. And even though Robinson was only caught because his father turned him in, Patel nevertheless took credit on Fox News for the suspect’s capture. “I made the executive decision” to release photos of the suspect before the arrest, he declared, as if that’s not common FBI practice.

But the weirdest moment may be how the director decided to punctuate what was supposed to be a sober-minded press conference on Sept. 12 revealing the details of Robinson’s arrest. “Lastly, to my friend Charlie Kirk, rest now, brother,” Patel said. “We have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla.”

When Patel appeared before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., made sure to raise the issue. “I’m seeing an FBI leadership more focused on social media clout and on political revenge than on fighting crime,” he said to Patel. Coons cited the aggressive sacking of seasoned professionals at the FBI over the past few months, which included the head of the Salt Lake City field office being pushed out. Her only transgression appears to be her identity as a female Pakistani-American.

Coons also noted that Patel has decimated the FBI’s efforts to fight domestic terrorism, which has long been a far-right pipe dream. The changes also seem to have hobbled the bureau’s efforts to find Kirk’s assassin.

When he’s in the safe space of right-wing media, Patel conducts himself with a brash overconfidence. But during Tuesday’s hearing, which focused heavily on his many failures during his brief tenure at the FBI, he was radiating an almost frenetic anxiety. Patel’s opening statement was punctuated by a series of snorts so loud that it seemed he might soon eject a noodle from his sinus cavity. During the opening remarks of Sen. Dick Durbin, the committee’s ranking member, the director was especially uncomfortable, pretending to read papers rather than hear the Illinois Democrat call out his erratic behavior.

“Mr. Patel was so anxious to take credit for finding Mr. Kirk’s assassin that he violated one of the basics of effective law enforcement,” Durbin explained as Patel squirmed. “At critical stages of an investigation, shut up and let the professionals do their job.”

Patel repeatedly defended his behavior as “transparency,” but legal experts pointed out that his rush to get likes and retweets made prosecutors’ jobs much harder. “Patel has given a master class in how NOT to lead an investigation,” Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, posted on X.

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Former senior FBI agent Stephen Laycock agreed, telling NPR, “You take your time, collect the evidence, whatever facts you have, conduct interviews, then see where it will lead. You don’t rush out and say the person of interest is the person who did the shooting.”

Rebecca Roiphe, a law professor at New York University, told Newsweek that Patel’s reckless behavior “created the possibility of a tainted trial.”

MSNBC legal analyst — and former Watergate prosecutor — Jill Wine-Banks tweeted, “Patel violated DOJ rules & risks case against Kirk’s killer being thrown out for violations of his due process rights.”

But don’t expect Kirk’s other purported friend, Donald Trump, to care that his FBI director is making justice for the activist’s death harder to achieve. Only two days after Kirk’s killing, it seemed the president would rather talk about the construction of his White House ballroom than his departed comrade.

Over the past week, it’s become seemingly clear that Kirk’s fellow MAGA leaders are less interested in putting his suspected killer in prison than they are in leveraging this moment for political gain. In a move that was dystopian even by MAGA standards, Vice President JD Vance and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller took over Kirk’s podcast on Monday, completing the process of turning his assassination into content.

The nature of that content was chilling: Vance and Miller promised that they’d use the death of Kirk, who billed himself as a champion of free speech as an opportunity to destroy that very right. (In fact, as others have described, the activist was very much not a freedom of speech defender.) Vance encouraged listeners to “call their employer” and rat out colleagues who express objectionable comments about Kirk’s killing. Having the vice president declare that a condition of your employment should be feigning grief might skirt being an outright violation of the First Amendment, but it’s certainly a chilling violation of its basic spirit.

Miller was even more frightening. He declared that progressive organizers should “live in exile” and that Trump will “find you,” and “take away your money, take away your power and if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”

The “if” caveat isn’t as safe as it seems. As we’ve seen with Trump’s charges of mortgage fraud against Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, the administration doesn’t feel there needs to be evidence before accusing perceived opponents of crimes.

Patel’s attention-seeking isn’t just clownish, it’s dangerous — and not just because he’s undermining the FBI’s ability to fight crime. One of MAGA’s toxic innovations is the way it has weaponized narcissism for propaganda purposes. This, of course, flows from Trump, whose uncanny levels of conceit have empowered him to say and do whatever he feels serves his political interests, with full contempt for both morality and shame. But the behavior is functioning throughout the MAGA-sphere, and it’s led by people like Patel. Their ravenous need for attention makes them perfect propagandists in the social media era.

Americans with normal levels of basic decency let their consciences prevent them from exploiting the death of a purported friend before he’s even buried. But Patel’s all-consuming drive to be on camera appears to trump whatever private grief he may be feeling — and that’s why the White House hired him. As with many other top administration officials, Patel’s value is primarily as a propagandist, even at the expense of his actual job.