Kash Patel Lie Congress Get Him Fired

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Hi there everyone, it's 4:00 in New York. It hasn't even been 24 hours, but Kash Patel's testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday is already raising major alarm bells over whether or not the director of the FBI was telling the truth to Congress, not just about the news accounts of his excessive drinking on the job, the administration of polygraph tests at the FBI, or of firing agents for political reasons, but also about the very statistics that he relied upon to defend his job amid all those embarrassing headlines. According to brand new exclusive reporting from our colleagues, Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, when it comes to the arrests Kash Patel boasted about yesterday, quote, "Patel's FBI has imposed new policies that inflate these numbers and overstate the FBI's progress in stemming crime. That is according to a half dozen law enforcement sources with knowledge of the changes."

[00:00:55]Kash Patel's lack of transparency is even causing some from inside the FBI to speak out, with one current official telling MS Now This, quote, "They're absolutely padding the stats and claiming arrests they would not have claimed."

[00:01:11]And one former official adds this, quote, "Agents inside the bureau complained frequently about Patel's bogus arrest numbers. Kash is definitely engineering things to pad his stats," the former official said.

[00:01:24]Here is what Kash Patel said yesterday before Congress.

[00:01:31]>> We've arrested eight of the top 10 most wanted fugitives in the world in 14 months. That's twice as many in the four years combined. That is what the men and women of the FBI are doing well resourced. Everyone should take a look at this. If people want to continue the baseless, fraudulent, false personal attacks at me, that's great. Keep the target on me as I always said, but the mission has never been better.

[00:01:53]>> The FBI is now facing explosive accusations that under Director Cash Patel, arrest numbers are being manipulated to create the appearance of a massive crime-fighting success story.

[00:02:04]According to multiple law enforcement sources, new internal policies are allegedly inflating arrest statistics and overstating the Bureau's progress in combating crime across the United States.

[00:02:16]And the timing could not be more revealing.

[00:02:19]Just one day before these reports surfaced, Patel appeared before Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill and repeatedly pointed to soaring arrest numbers as proof that his leadership was delivering results.

[00:02:31]But when senators pressed him on questions surrounding his conduct and management of the Bureau, Patel reportedly avoided direct answers and pivoted back to those same statistics.

[00:02:43]Now critics are asking a dangerous question. Were those numbers ever real to begin with? This controversy strikes at the heart of something far bigger than politics.

[00:02:52]Americans expect federal law enforcement agencies to present facts, not public relations campaigns.

[00:03:00]The FBI is supposed to investigate crime objectively, not shape narratives to protect leadership or score political points.

[00:03:08]Former agents and legal analysts warn that if arrest data is being distorted, it could undermine trust in the entire justice system. Arrests alone do not equal convictions. They do not automatically mean crime is decreasing.

[00:03:21]And they certainly do not tell the full story of whether communities are actually safer. But in today's political climate, numbers can become weapons. If the public hears record arrests, many assume the government is winning the fight against crime.

[00:03:36]Politicians then repeat those figures on television, in campaign speeches, and during congressional hearings. The statistics become headlines. The headlines become narratives. And narratives shape elections. That is why this story matters. Because if law enforcement data is being exaggerated, Americans are no longer debating reality. They are debating a manufactured version of reality. Senate Democrats are already signaling that they may demand deeper investigations into Patel's leadership.

[00:04:06]Critics argue that the FBI under Patel has become increasingly politicized, focusing more on optics and media messaging than transparency.

[00:04:16]Supporters of Patel, however, say the attacks are politically motivated and designed to undermine aggressive enforcement policies. But the political consequences could stretch far beyond Washington.

[00:04:29]Inside the United States, public trust in federal institutions is already fragile after years of political division, election disputes, and investigations involving both parties.

[00:04:40]Another scandal involving manipulated information could deepen public cynicism and fuel even more distrust toward law enforcement agencies.

[00:04:49]For ordinary Americans, that erosion of trust has real consequences. Communities become less likely to cooperate with investigators.

[00:04:58]Witnesses hesitate to come forward.

[00:05:01]Juries grow skeptical. And every major investigation becomes instantly viewed through a political lens instead of a legal one. The damage does not stop at America's borders, either.

[00:05:12]The FBI is one of the most recognized law enforcement agencies in the world.

[00:05:16]Foreign governments cooperate with the bureau on terrorism, cybercrime, human trafficking, and international corruption cases.

[00:05:25]If America's top investigative agency is accused of manipulating crime data for political purposes, it risks weakening America's credibility abroad.

[00:05:35]Authoritarian governments could use this controversy to argue that the United States no longer practices the transparency it lectures other nations about.

[00:05:44]Allies may begin questioning intelligence assessments and law enforcement partnerships.

[00:05:51]Rivals like China and Russia could point to the scandal as evidence of democratic institutions losing integrity from within.

[00:05:58]And politically, this lands at one of the most sensitive moments possible.

[00:06:03]Crime, immigration, and federal law enforcement are already central issues heading into future elections.

[00:06:10]Any perception that statistics are being massaged for political advantage could become a major campaign issue for both parties.

[00:06:18]Republicans may rally behind Patel and frame the criticism as another attempt by establishment figures to sabotage outsider leadership.

[00:06:26]Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to argue that the controversy proves federal agencies are being reshaped into political tools. Either way, the American public is left caught in the middle, wondering whether the information coming from its most powerful institutions can still be trusted. And that may be the most dangerous consequence of all.

[00:06:47]Because once trust in facts collapses, every institution built on those facts begins to crack with it.

[00:06:57]>> According to an MS now review under Kash Patel's leadership, quote, the FBI has manipulated that iconic bureau program in a way that falsely suggests rapid progress. In that time, the bureau has quickly added the names of some fugitives just hours or days before agents captured them. When reached for comment, the FBI disputed that arrests were being counted improperly without providing any specifics. Kash Patel being willing to inflate statistics about his agency's work to try to save his job is where we begin today with senior investigative reporter Carol Lennick, whose byline is on that reporting. Also joining us, former assistant special agent in charge at the FBI, national security and intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg. Uh Carol Lennick, us through what you're reporting.

[00:07:44]>> Yeah, thanks Nicole for focusing on it.

[00:07:46]Um you know, my colleague Kendel Lani and I have been working on this for a little while uh and then you know, we'd been hearing tips for some time that the statistics that Kash Patel sometimes mentioned, they said were juiced or inflated unfairly and intentionally. And and while we were working on this, Kash Patel is brought before the Senate to answer questions. And instead of answering those blistering questions, he waves a black placard in the air and says, "These are the This is the proof that I'm really running this agency quite well, and this is the FBI under my leadership." And started to cite these same statistics that we have been hearing were were bogus. We um began sort of concretizing our work, re-corroborating, going back to sources.

[00:08:37]And the two big findings were these.

[00:08:40]One, that the FBI has begun counting arrests, particularly immigration agents' arrests, whenever FBI agents are present um or simply, you know, assisting. Uh FBI agents, as you know, Nicole, were ordered in the summer and the fall of this past year to begin going out in huge waves of teams joining immigration agents and local police to try to arrest, detain, and eventually deport immigrants from this country at the behest of Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. So now all of those arrests um are being counted as FBI arrests, which helps Mr. Patel, Director Patel, claim that there is a huge spike in arrests, at least in the way that he's counting them. The second big takeaway here, Nicole, is about, you know, something that everyone in America probably recognizes about the FBI, the most wanted list.

[00:09:42]This is supposed to be the 10 people that are the most dangerous villains in in the world and that have been we've been hunting for them for possibly years. What my colleague Ken Delaney and I found in reviewing those based on good information from sources was that four of the eight people that Cash Patel says were arrested from that fugitive list, that most villainous group, four were added within a month of actually being captured and one of them was arrested in an hour and 13 minutes after being put on the list. As sources told us these kinds of operations to seize dangerous fugitives don't happen in an hour and 13 minutes or even in 24 hours.

[00:10:30]And yet, again, two of the people that he says we famously captured were added to the list in a time when FBI agents said they knew they were going to arrest those people.

[00:10:42]>> So, I just want to make sure, let me just try to dumb down the two categories, the two ways the numbers are being fudged and inflated. The first one is if the FBI is assisting another law enforcement agency, federal or or state, they're adding all those numbers whether they were the lead, the top cops on the job or not. Is that right?

[00:11:02]>> That's right and whether they put cuffs on anyone.

[00:11:06]>> And then the second is um feels really manipulative. They know they're closing in on someone, they either have a wiretap approved or they know that they've got um the goods or they have plan to make the arrest so they add that name to the to the most wanted and then just oh coincidentally capture them within hours, days or weeks.

[00:11:27]>> That's right. Again, four of the eight were people who were arrested within a month, two of the eight were arrested within 24 hours of being added to the list.

[00:11:40]>> Um, so Michael Feinberg, it's clear that Kash Patel thinks that we're dumb.

[00:11:45]Um, I don't even know that Kash Patel would dispute that. Um, but he also thinks that the Bureau is as dumb and as shallow as he is. And I wonder how this um, collides with the integrity of the men and women who are still there.

[00:12:01]>> You know, I think I've said before on your program, I don't know a single person still at the FBI or who has recently left it that has the slightest iota of respect for Kash Patel. He is widely viewed as a clown within the organization. Um, but he's a clown with a flamethrower. And a clown with a flamethrower can still do a lot of damage, and he has. To the individual lives of agents he's fired for political reasons, to the programs he has deprioritized in favor of immigration priorities, and you know, just to the institution itself with the manipulation of statistics as Carolyn Penn have shown.

[00:12:46]But we can't put all the blame on Kash Patel.

[00:12:51]I'd be remiss if I did not point out that this is also a failure of oversight.

[00:12:56]At every hearing where he has struggled to defend himself and distract from the various allegations against his integrity and character and situational judgment, he has screamed or paraded the statistics about crimes like murder or rape or robbery or other violent crimes.

[00:13:19]Most members of Congress, most members of the Senate, most representatives have been to law school.

[00:13:25]And somebody who's been through the first week of law school should realize none of those crimes that Kash Patel mentions are actually federal crimes.

[00:13:35]They're all They're all state offenses over which the FBI does not have primary or original jurisdiction.

[00:13:43]So, this has been painfully obvious to many of us when he talks about the murder rate dropping, when he talks about violent crime being stopped, what he's actually doing is stealing credit and honor from state and local law enforcement agencies that are doing the majority of the work, and he's taking credit simply because there might have been one FBI task force member out there with them.

[00:14:10]>> I take your point on oversight, but and and I and I take the point that the men and women who have made up the workforce of the FBI would find this um sort of um grifting honor um offensive.

[00:14:25]But, what does it say that you know, it takes a piece of investigative journalism and that no one really pressed him on this in yesterday's questioning, Michael?

[00:14:38]>> It's I mean, look, I really think this is largely a failure of oversight. It should not be news to anybody in Congress or anybody in the media or anybody in the judiciary that Kash Patel dances around questions.

[00:14:58]And with very few exceptions, there have not been aggressive attempts to pin him down.

[00:15:04]Now, I do want to tie this back to the workforce you asked about for a second, though.

[00:15:11]And the reason the workforce may not be speaking about this largely is because the last thing that a real FBI agent cares about is statistics.

[00:15:23]You care about working your cases, you care about getting the bad guy off of the street, you care about protecting witnesses, and you care about making victims whole.

[00:15:32]Who gets credit doesn't matter. Whether it impresses the White House doesn't matter.

[00:15:40]Whether you can wave a flag in statistics in front of Congress does not matter, either.

[00:15:45]The only people who care about those sorts of things are people like Kash Patel who have no familiarity with the work and realize that the mission and the purpose has very little to do with the statistics you report.