Kash Patel, the former podcaster who now runs the FBI for Trump, took issue with a story on MSNBC about an agent being fired for refusing to help arrange a “perp walk” of former director James Comey
Donald Trump’s FBI director branded a TV news network an “a** clown factory” in a deeply unhinged online rant.
Kash Patel, the former podcaster who now runs the FBI for Trump, took issue with a story on MSNBC about an agent being fired for refusing to help arrange a “perp walk” of former director James Comey.
Comey is being pursued by the FBI at Trump’s insistence, over claims he lied to Congress.
According to several news outlets, FBI leadership wanted to do a “showy” arrest of Trump’s arch enemy.
Leadership reportedly asked for “large, beefy” agents to conduct an arrest “in full kit” including Kevlar vests emblazoned with the FBI logo.
Chris Ray, a supervisory special agent in the violent crimes division, was asked to put together the kind of agents who fit the bill, but he refused – saying it would be inappropriate and highly unusual for a white-collar defendant like Comey.
According to CBS he was suspended for insubordination.
MSNBC legal analyst Barb McQuade posted on X that DoJ policy “prohibits ‘perp walks’, in which arrestees are paraded before the cameras.”
Kash Patel, appeared to confirm the story about Agent Ray being relieved of duty in a lurid – and manifestly inaccurate post in response.
“BREAKING: MSNBC still an a** clown factory of disinformation,” Patel wrote.
“Same circus animals that slobbered all over perp walks of Stone, Navarro, Bannon… MSNBC has no facts and no audience. In this FBI, follow the chain of command or get relieved.”
Perp walks are usually pre-arranged media moments allowing cameras to capture a detainee in police custody as they’re led, often shacked, to a police station or courthouse.
Of the three people Patel listed in his post, only one was ever “perp walked” – and, crucially, none of them were ever perp walked by the FBI.
Former Trump advisor Peter Navarro was not “perp walked”. He was arrested at Washington DC’s Ronald Reagan Airport after refusing to obey a subpoena – the equivalent of failing to turn up for a court summons. He was not paraded before cameras, and there is no known footage of the arrest.
He was found guilty and sentenced to four months in jail.
Roger Stone was not “perp walked” either. While a CNN crew did capture the moment FBI agents arrived at his house to present him with a warrant in a dawn raid, the only footage of him in handcuffs is taken from his own home CCTV cameras.
And Roger Stone was not charged with minor crimes – he was up for witness tampering and obstruction of justice as well as lying to congress, hence the dawn raid.
He was convicted by a jury on all counts. Donald Trump pardoned him at the end of his first term.
Steve Bannon was “perp walked”, but not by the FBI.
He was convicted of defrauding donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a scheme claiming to fund a private US-Mexico border wall, which prosecutors said he instead used for personal expenses.
He was sentenced to four years in prison, and pardoned by Trump in 2020. He was “perp-walked” by New York law enforcement during a later state fraud case, but never by the FBI.