Director Kash Patel says his team is working on implementing new civil liberties protections at the FBI and touted his effort to refocus the bureau after confirmation that the investigative agency collected expansive phone data on Republican senators, House members, staff, and White House officials.
He said his team has, or is currently working on, implementing new civil liberties protections at the FBI and touted his effort to refocus the bureau on its core mission.
“We’ve ended that regime,” Patel told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview with the Just the News, No Noise TV show which aired on Wednesday.
30 million lines of telephone data
Earlier this month, Just the News reported that the FBI collected call data on Republican senators and one House member as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the January 6 Capitol riot.
Just the News also reported on Tuesday that congressional investigators had collected 30 million lines of phone data mapping contacts between conservatives and the Trump White House in the name of investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. The data was later offered to the bureau on the eve of the 2024 election.
Patel: “It is law enforcement first”
“We’ve already implemented changes. We’ve already informed Congress we won’t be grabbing their cell phone records or their staff or cell phone records for just a sense of weaponization,” Patel said.
He told Just the News a big part of preventing these abuses in the future is refocusing the agency on its core mission, to enforce the law and investigate crimes.
“So the good news about this FBI, it is mission focused,” Patel said. “It is law enforcement first, and it doesn’t matter if you’re red or blue or in between, or where you live, we are going to come in and root out not just criminality, but corruption in every single town in this country.”
Internal documents unearthed by Patel’s FBI and turned over to Congress showed that Special Counsel Smith obtained the phone records from eight senators and one House member in President Trump’s orbit.
Hellbound and Down 