The F.B.I. director has come under withering attack in recent days, but with Republicans backing him, the proceedings fell into a familiar partisan groove that appeared to play to his strengths.
The two agents’ accounts offer an inside view of a bureau buffeted by politics and upheaval, adding to the scrutiny of the F.B.I. director as he prepares to testify to Congress.
“We were always told that we would be taken care of and there would not be any retaliation for our assigned work,” Walter Giardina told his supervisors the day he was fired from his job as an F.B.I. agent, according to the 19-year bureau veteran.
F.B.I. leaders touted the immense federal deployment assigned to find the assassin. But their big break came with a single tip — from the suspect’s own family.
Already, a series of missteps by Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, in recent months have invited worries that he has eroded public confidence in the agency.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, attended a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York before heading to Utah to oversee the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, said that the agency’s investigation was continuing, reversing his earlier announcement that someone had been apprehended.
A lawsuit filed by three former F.B.I. officials charges the bureau director Kash Patel dismissed them as part of “a campaign of retribution” for their “failure to demonstrate sufficient personal and political loyalty.”
Connexion
