FBI ‘is rudderless ship’ with director Kash Patel ‘in over his head’, damning report by agents claims
The FBI is a “rudderless ship” under director Kash Patel, who was described as being “in over his head” in a damning assessment by active-duty and retired agents.
Days after President Donald Trump denied reports he was considering ousting Patel from his post as FBI director, a group of 24 experienced agents has shared a scathing report detailing their thoughts on his first six months in office, due to be presented to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees later this week.
The report, obtained by the New York Post, comes after Patel has faced the heat for his use of government aircraft for multiple personal trips, assigning a SWAT team to protect his girlfriend, and reported clashes with senior Trump administration officials.
The White House denied media reports that Patel was “on thin ice,” but the withering report by FBI insiders revealed a “troubling picture of a chronically underperforming agency debilitated by low confidence in FBI Leadership based on a lack of prior experience.”
One agent referred to the FBI’s leadership as the “Kash-Bongino circus,” while another criticized Patel for “paralyzing leadership at all levels.”
The Independent has contacted the FBI for comment.
Unnamed special agents, some of whom have been at the bureau for multiple decades, reported that Patel “has neither the breadth of experience nor the bearing an FBI director needs to be successful,” while his deputy, Dan Bongino, was described as “something of a clown.”
Patel has not yet responded to the claims in the report but Bongino dismissed them as “gossipy nonsense” in a post on X Monday morning.
“A LOT of people are very upset at the changes and reforms we’ve made at the FBI,” Bongino said. “They will do anything to revert to the old ways of doing things. So they leak gossipy nonsense to media outlets and “journalists” with a clear agenda, and they ignore the historic results and the significant reforms we instituted.”
A special agent of more than 20 years, who went by ALPHA 52 in the report, also blasted Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The Justice Department and the FBI released a joint memo in July that effectively drew a line under the investigation and said no further documents in the case would be released.
While the agent did not specifically refer to the memo in the report, they said that Bondi and the FBI “badly handled” the release of the files, which caused “significant” reputational damage to the agency as a “direct result.”
Some special agents were also pulled off other case work for one week to redact documents related to the Epstein case, according to the report, only for Trump and Bondi to pull the plug on releasing the files.
Another source in the report said that Patel was “very personable and likeable,” but also said that he “has created a culture of mistrust and uncertainty among the ranks.”
