Kash Patel’s Big Mouth May Have Landed Trump in Hot Water

FBI Director Kash Patel’s yapping may have implicated Donald Trump in another legal fiasco.

A lawsuit brought by three senior FBI agents—Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans—accuses Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the agencies they head of wrongfully firing the men.

Driscoll argued that he was fired after he attempted to halt the firing of another FBI employee, Christopher Meyer, who was ordered to pilot Patel’s flights to Las Vegas but had also been falsely accused of signing off on the agency’s 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Driscoll served as acting FBI director at the start of the year—by accident. Robert Kissane was supposed to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray in January, but a clerical error instead placed Driscoll at the top of the FBI. Kissane then acted as Driscoll’s number two—an oversight that wasn’t corrected until the Senate confirmed Patel at the end of February. Driscoll notably refused orders from the White House to expose the bureau staff who were involved in the January 6 probe, earning him the adoration of his colleagues, who nicknamed the 45-year-old “Saint Driz.”

The legal complaint torches Patel’s leadership at the agency from the perspective of the senior agents, accusing the FBI leader of punishing the trio because they attempted to treat other subordinates, such as Meyer, with respect. But the suit also claims that Patel was fully aware of the illegality of his actions as he worked to force them and their peers out the door.

“When Driscoll explained that firing employees based on case assignments would be in direct violation of internal FBI processes meant to adjudicate adverse actions and prevent retaliation based on case assignments, Patel said that he understood that and he knew the nature of the summary firings were likely illegal and that he could be sued and later deposed,” the complaint reads.

Beyond blatantly violating the law, the statement also stood in direct contrast to what Patel had promised Congress during his confirmation process weeks earlier, when he swore to Senator Richard Blumenthal that all FBI employees would “be protected against political retribution.”

But the phrasing of Patel’s rebuke also implicated Trump, explicitly pointing to the Justice Department and the White House as the origin of the command.

“Patel explained that there was nothing he or Driscoll could do to stop these or any other firings, because ‘the FBI tried to put the President in jail and he hasn’t forgotten it,’” according to the legal filing.

National security journalists were quick to note that Patel’s loose lips might have made it easier for the ex-FBI agents to achieve an incredible feat: getting a U.S. president to sit for a deposition.

FBI Director Kash Patel is hoping to salvage his mishandled manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer.

Speaking at a press conference Friday morning, Patel attempted to take a little credit for a job well done.

“This is what happens when you let good cops be cops,” Patel said. “The FBI and our partners are proud to stand here today together to bring justice to the family of Charlie Kirk.”

But Patel’s manhunt didn’t accomplish much—22-year-old Tyler Robinson was “turned in” by a family member, President Donald Trump claimed Friday morning.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirmed Trump’s statement, telling the Friday morning press conference that a family friend of Robinson’s had contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, after learning from a family member that he’d confessed. “We got him,” Cox said.

Patel viewed this manhunt as an opportunity to prove himself—but he seemed to stumble through it.

On Wednesday, Patel quickly got out over his skis, when he congratulated state and federal officials for taking “the subject for the horrific shooting today” into custody, only to release that suspect hours later.

Patel completely lost it during a meeting Thursday with 200 agents involved in the manhunt, berating them with expletives and accusing them of slowing down the search.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe criticized Patel’s decision to get personally involved in the search, arguing that his presence would impose a “huge burden” on the Salt Lake City field office and that his missteps were either the result of a poor flow of information or Patel’s own utter cluelessness.

Representative Nancy Mace, of all people, is accusing Democrats of derogatory conduct toward Republicans.

In a Friday morning appearance on CNN, Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, attributed the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk to an increase in political violence and divisiveness—problems that she, absurdly, said were confined to the left.

“It’s very one-sided right now,” Mace said. “I have never called one of my colleagues the kind of names that we’ve been called. I’ve never dehumanized my colleagues.”

The claim echoes those of many prominent Republicans who have baselessly blamed the shooting and the nation’s political temperature entirely on the Democratic Party and left generally.

The sentiment was particularly ludicrous coming from Mace, who has a well-documented history of transphobic attacks.

The South Carolina Republican notoriously responded to the election of the first transgender woman in Congress, Democratic Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware, with an outpouring of hate.

In November 2024, Mace spearheaded an effort to ban transgender people from using Capitol bathrooms, which she said was “absolutely” meant to target McBride. Mace referred to McBride as a “biological man,” saying, “It’s offensive that a man in a skirt thinks that he’s my equal.”

When demonstrators protested the ban, she referred to them using the transphobic slur “tranny.” (When confronted for her use of the term in a congressional hearing, she said tauntingly, “Tranny! Tranny! Tranny!”)

Mace’s hostility toward her colleagues doesn’t stop at transphobia. In January, for example, she responded to criticisms from Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett with an apparent threat. “If you want to take it outside,” she said, cutting herself off. She later claimed she hadn’t been suggesting “a physical fight.”

President Donald Trump wants to paint right-wing extremists as vigilante heroes, while demonizing “vicious” radicals on the left.

Speaking on Fox & Friends Friday about Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump admitted that he isn’t all that concerned about right-wing radicals.

“Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical ’cause they don’t want to see crime, they don’t want to see crime,” Trump said. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in, we don’t want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’

“The radicals on the left are the problem,” he continued, “and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

Trump’s blatant effort to defend political violence committed by people he agrees with is not necessarily surprising, given his steadfast support for the rioters at the Capitol on January 6 and accused murderers such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. He also previously defended attendees of the 2021 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which was organized by neo-Nazis.

But Trump’s statement is deeply misleading about the trends in politically motivated violence in the United States. Right-wing attacks and plans accounted for the majority of all terrorist incidents between 1994 and 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Between 1975 and September 2025, individuals motivated by right-wing ideologies such white supremacy, involuntary celibacy, and anti-abortion beliefs committed 391 murders, according to the Cato Institute. Comparatively, people motivated by left-wing ideologies were responsible for 65 deaths.

As recently as this week, a 16-year-old in Colorado who was accused of shooting two of his classmates reportedly embraced antisemitic and white supremacist social media content.

Within hours of Kirk’s death and without knowing any information about the shooter, Trump blamed the “radical left” and their rhetoric for political violence by “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

Meanwhile, Democrats uniformly condemned Kirk’s murder—and right-wing activists were foaming at the mouth for an all-out war.

It seems clear that Trump isn’t interested in turning down the temperature on political tensions in the United States, and he’s just given the go-ahead to right-wing radicals to take matters into their own hands.

Bullet casings engraved by Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer tell a very different story about his political ideologies than previously understood.

Authorities identified the suspect as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah. Robinson reportedly revealed his actions to his family members, who turned him in Friday morning. He has been booked into the Utah County jail, according to Governor Spencer Cox.

During an FBI presser Friday, Cox revealed that police had located four bullet casings connected to Robinson—one fired, three unfired. The text on the fired casing made a possible reference to an old Reddit copypasta, reading: “Notices bulge OWO what’s this?”

The unfired casings featured different scrawls. One read, “Hey fascist! Catch!” Another: “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,” possibly referring to an Italian anti-fascist folk song. The last casing read: “If you read this you are gay LMAO.”

Contrary to prior reporting, none of the text suggested that Robinson was transgender or supported transgender people. But that didn’t stop the transgender community from catching heat: A bulletin circulated among law enforcement officials Thursday suggested that symbols on Robinson’s weapons expressed “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” That detail was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal eventually retracted the premature release, though its correction wasn’t enough to stop MAGA-heads and other far-right personalities from dogpiling on the transgender community in their vengeful grief over Kirk’s murder. In the wake of that reporting, conservatives referred to trans people as a “species” that deserves “no mercy,” calling for them to be “rounded up” and “deported.”

Robinson was registered as a nonpartisan voter. Both of his parents, however, are registered Republicans, according to public records.

Citing one of Robinson’s family members, Cox said at the news conference that the suspect had “become more political in recent years,” particularly about Kirk.