The F.B.I. director has come under withering attack in recent days, but with Republicans backing him, the proceedings fell into a familiar partisan groove that appeared to play to his strengths.
The attorney general also said she could investigate businesses that refused to print Charlie Kirk vigil posters as the Trump administration pushes to punish anyone who celebrated his killing.
Attorney General Pam Bondi later appeared to back away from a broad interpretation of her remarks on “hate speech,” which had raised free speech concerns.
The two agents’ accounts offer an inside view of a bureau buffeted by politics and upheaval, adding to the scrutiny of the F.B.I. director as he prepares to testify to Congress.
“We were always told that we would be taken care of and there would not be any retaliation for our assigned work,” Walter Giardina told his supervisors the day he was fired from his job as an F.B.I. agent, according to the 19-year bureau veteran.
F.B.I. leaders touted the immense federal deployment assigned to find the assassin. But their big break came with a single tip — from the suspect’s own family.
Already, a series of missteps by Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, in recent months have invited worries that he has eroded public confidence in the agency.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, attended a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York before heading to Utah to oversee the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Law enforcement officers patrolling on the Utah Valley University campus after Charlie Kirk was shot in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday. An older-model Mauser bolt action rifle was recovered in a wooded area near the campus, according to federal law enforcement officials.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, said that the agency’s investigation was continuing, reversing his earlier announcement that someone had been apprehended.
A lawsuit filed by three former F.B.I. officials charges the bureau director Kash Patel dismissed them as part of “a campaign of retribution” for their “failure to demonstrate sufficient personal and political loyalty.”
The move was instigated by Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist who has said it is legitimate for officials to publicly air criminal investigations into people targeted by the president.
President Trump has been trying to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, over allegations that she falsified bank documents to obtain favorable terms on a mortgage.
If President Trump’s actions were intended to drive a law-and-order wedge between Democratic big-city leaders and their constituents, it has also exposed a division in his own coalition.
Connexion
