Kash Patel’s FBI promotion of MAGA villain sends – Latest News
The promotion of Steven Jensen, the architect of the FBI’s overzealous January 6 investigation, to go the Washington Field Office has confounded Trump supporters and crushed their hopes that new FBI Director Kash Patel would reform the bureau and root out those that focused Donald Trump and his supporters.
As the part chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, from 2020 till October 2021, Jensen additionally oversaw the FBI’s controversial operations focusing on dad and mom at school-board conferences and Catholics going to conventional Latin Mass.
Plucking him from relative obscurity in South Carolina to go the FBI’s strongest discipline workplace sends precisely the unsuitable message.
It has brought about consternation throughout the spectrum, from Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation to FBI whistleblowers and J6’ers guilty of misdemeanor trespass as a result of they walked by means of an open door.
While a source close to Patel swears that the director has a good purpose to raise Jensen that might be clear “this week or within a month,” neither he nor his deputy Dan Bongino agreed to an interview and the FBI has refused to touch upon the problem.
They hope the furor will blow over.
Feeling betrayed
But FBI whistleblowers who put their careers on the road to reveal the weaponization of the bureau really feel betrayed.
“Steven Jensen weaponized the FBI to persecute Americans over January 6th,” says Steve Friend, who blew the whistle to Congress about harmful and pointless SWAT raids on cooperative misdemeanor suspects and the manipulation of statistics to make the so-called “domestic terrorism” menace from that day look more widespread than it actually was.
After 9 years as an FBI agent, Friend resigned after 5 months of unpaid indefinite suspension for refusing to take part in a J6 raid and is presently unemployed.
“Jensen’s promotion to head the Washington Field Office is analogous to placing Anthony Fauci in charge of Health and Human Services,” he says.
George Hill, a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst, says Jensen was “the most ardent and supercharged person when it came to rounding up” J6 defendants and a true believer in Joe Biden’s domestic-terrorism narrative that the riot was the worst assault on democracy since Pearl Harbor and that each Trump supporter in and across the Capitol that day was an insurrectionist, a white supremacist and doubtless violent.
He testified to the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government in 2023 about a convention call through which he allegedly heard Jensen berating brokers in Philadelphia who have been “pushing back” on calls for to “round up” J6 suspects.
“The Philadelphia office said, ‘Well, there’s no evidence of any kind of, you know, violent leanings or insurrectionist leanings,’ to which Steve Jensen said, ‘You know, I don’t give a blank, they’re goddamn terrorists and we’re gonna round them all up.”
Jensen has refused to remark, though an FBI source denies Hill’s model of the dialog.
In a cellphone interview with The Post this week, Hill mentioned he testified towards Jensen as a result of “I used to be simply horrified on the breathless method at which he was doing this J6 roundup of so known as home terrorists.
Hunted down J6’ers
“He set up the infrastructure for that. He made the choices, set up the mechanisms whereby all of the instances can be opened across the nation to present the image that this was a nationwide downside. Previously it might have been opened up [as one case with multiple suspects] in Washington — however by opening it that approach you allowed Chris Wray to take a seat in Congress and say home terrorism was a nationwide downside.
“Jensen and [former Washington Field Offoce boss Steven] D’Antuono were driving the field offices to open cases without predication.”
Hill, who was co-supervisor of the Boston Marathon bombing activity pressure — and so understands the menace of terrorism higher than most — says that the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, the biggest operation in FBI historical past, was a “rainmaker for 100 FBI personnel not only to make their careers but to make bonus money.”
Since the information of Jensen’s promotion was reported approvingly by The New York Times final Friday, the story has taken on a weird life of its own on social media, with fights raging between Patel loyalists and numerous FBI whistleblowers.
A spokeswoman for Patel has been briefing reporters to “trust Kash and Dan” and Bongino has been tweeting cryptic posts on X: “Be cautious of narrative ‘traps,’ let time put the puzzle pieces together, and what we’re doing will make sense. I see and hear you.”
Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president and veteran warrior for transparency in authorities, was dismayed by Jensen’s promotion.
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“He was a key figure in this domestic-terror push against January 6’ers . . . He treated them all as terrorists and was one of the key instigators in pushing the narrative within the bureaucracy that these folks needed to be jailed and ferreted out.”
There have been high expectations for reform of the FBI within the second coming of Trump.
There can be no more of the scary weaponization and politicization of the Trump period. No more searching down conservatives and Trump supporters.
No more Wray swanning across the nation on the FBI personal aircraft and bolting early from Senate oversight hearings to jet off to his weekender within the Adirondacks.
We anticipated investigations into FBI scandals resembling:
The coverup of Biden household corruption.
The covert-influence operation to influence social-media firms to censor The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop computer tales earlier than the 2020 election.
The Russiagate hoax that dogged President Trump’s first time period.
The raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida home, which included brokers rummaging by means of First Lady Melania Trump’s underwear drawer.
The raid and covert-surveillance warrant of Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
The arrest and shackling of Trump adviser Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport.
The focusing on of dad and mom in school board conferences.
The focusing on of Catholics who attend conventional Latin Mass.
The focusing on of pro-lifers.
We hoped Patel and his fellow MAGA hero Bongino would focus the bureau on actual national threats like terrorism and arranged crime. They would wipe out the seventh ground and set up a handpicked crew of high-integrity Untouchables who would hit the ground operating, root out wrongdoing and reinstate whistleblowers.
Instead, they appointed a fox to protect the chicken coop.
It’s early days so everybody who admires Patel needs to present him the benefit of the doubt. But there’s no time to waste.
