New Disclosures Underscore Challenges at FBI

More evidence of Comey-era skullduggery in Crossfire Hurricane operation is a reminder what the new leadership team at the FBI is up against.

It only took a matter of weeks before corners of the Trump base turned on Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, number one and two respectively at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A handful of social media influencers have already deemed their nascent leadership a failure while making outlandish accusations as to why answers and arrests aren’t coming more quickly.

Part of the overall frustration is understandable. Following Patel’s hard-fought confirmation in March, the MAGA base believed some of the biggest villains responsible for the decade-long lawfare against the president, his allies, and his voters would immediately find themselves in handcuffs.

Long-hidden files disclosing incriminating evidence related to Jeffrey Epstein—an expectation partially created by Attorney General Pam Bondi early on—would finally confirm the dirty deeds of Trump saboteurs including Bill Clinton and Bill Gates.

The J6 pipe bomber would be identified; the number of government assets involved on Jan 6 would be revealed; and DOJ/FBI officials responsible for all of it would be perp-walked to a new DC gulag—all by April, some believed.

Early PR missteps didn’t do much to instill patience. Posts by Patel featuring the new director in full gear of the FBI, an agency he once wanted dismantled, while appearing ready to request more funding caused some head-scratching. (Patel has since clarified his support for the president’s proposed cuts to the bureau.)

Bongino, who started his gig as deputy director on March 17, began posting updates on X to give an overview of the goings-on at the bureau; cryptic messages signaled the formidable challenges the pair encountered upon their arrival at the institutionally corrupt FBI.

Uncovering the FBI’s Tricks of the Trade

A big hint of the trouble came during a May 18 interview on Fox News. “I’m just telling you right now, as much as we know about Crossfire Hurricane, he and I just found out more last week, and we’re continuing to work with Congress to put those documents out,” Patel, who in 2018 helped blow the lid off the Democrat-funded operation, told Maria Bartiromo. “That’s how vindictive the former leadership was. Not only did they bastardize the process, they withheld and hid documentation and put it in rooms where people weren’t supposed to look.”

In a separate interview, Bongino said some FBI insiders alerted them to the existence of hidden evidence.

Watch:

Later that day, Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released records that proved Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr not only lied to Congress related to her central involvement in Crossfire Hurricane but that the FBI—either by or at the direction of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office—buried evidence to protect her (and others) role in the hoax. Ohr, wife of top Obama DOJ official Bruce Ohr who also helped push the scam within the department, in 2019 was the subject of a criminal investigation for perjury.

The findings offer a peek into what Patel and Bongino are up against. (It is unclear if Grassley’s release is the new Crossfire Hurricane information Patel referred to in the Bartiromo interview.)

“[Relevant] FBI/DOJ information related to this assessment [on Ohr] was inaccessible to FBI investigators given that the Trump/Russia-collusion investigations were in FBI systems under ‘Prohibited Access’ status which, unlike ‘Restricted Access’ status, precludes investigators from detecting the existence of potentially relevant serials,” the 2019 FBI synopsis read. “Serials” is FBI lingo for files and forms in a case file.

“In other words, when search terms that exist in the Prohibited Access-status cases are searched in Sentinel, the particular search will receive a false-negative Sentinel search response.” (Sentinel is the bureau’s digital record-keeping system.)

Adding insult to injury, Mueller’s office stymied the Ohr investigation—conducted at the time by the Washington FBI field office—months after the special counsel’s office officially was closed in March 2019. For example, the “post” special counsel’s office on May 31 informed the FBI that “some but not all of the cases related to Trump/Russian-collusion had been migrated from Prohibited status to Restricted Access status.”

As late as June 2019, a full three months after Mueller’s operation was shuttered and two months after the release of his report, a special counsel official “declined to provide the requested [documents] based upon his determination that the requested [documents] were not relevant to this [Ohr] assessment.” FBI interviews with Bruce Ohr were among those hidden in the Prohibited file.

Further, the Ohr synopsis disclosed, “a vast majority of the requested material…were never disseminated to WFO.”

“People Thought We Wouldn’t Find It”

Now, if hangers-on at Mueller’s office could successfully conceal records from the most powerful FBI office in the country related to an investigation green-lighted by the attorney general and initiated by a top Republican congressman—imagine what’s hiding under the figurative beds of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Chris Wray.

Additionally, imagine what Special Counsel Jack Smith buried in the same system in the same manner related to his dual investigations into the president.

Patel recently indicated more bombshells are forthcoming. “We have found material…that I didn’t know existed in FBI holdings,” Patel told Bret Baier in a May 28 interview. “That’s been stashed away in locations that people thought we wouldn’t find it because we wouldn’t know to look for it there.”

A “continuing production” of documents, Patel confirmed, is on its way to Congress.

The Ohr disclosures again remind the public how all the perpetrators of Crossfire Hurricane—a destructive operation that hobbled the first half of President Trump’s term, resulted in the political prosecution of several individuals, sowed distrust about the legitimacy of the president’s victory, and monopolized the attention of the media and Congress—got away with it. Hence the frustration and impatience of the Trump base right now.

But these revelations, and undoubtedly future disclosures, emphasize what Patel and Bongino are up against. New leadership at the FBI does not automatically change old ways—patience not clickbait outrage is required.