Is THIS The Charlie Kirk Shooter, This Time?
Third time's the charm?
One way you can tell that maybe you aren’t the greatest FBI director to walk the earth is when your job performance gets critiqued by a January 6 seditionist who can’t believe how badly you’re doing. After FBI chief Kash Patel announced Wednesday that a “subject” had been arrested in the the murder of Charlie Kirk, then walked it back an hour later, he got a negative performance review on Twitter (archive link) from Joe Biggs, a former Proud Boy top leader whose 17-year sentence for seditious conspiracy was commuted by Donald Trump.
Biggs just wanted to know: “Why is the head of the FBI speculating like everyone not in the know?” He went on, reminding Patel, “you're the person we are supposed to get the final truth from. Stop all this click bait shit you keep doing. It's unbecoming of the office in which you represent and only proves you were a horrible pick for this position.”
Perhaps for the good of everyone, Patel somehow didn’t then get into a Twitter beef with Biggs. And as HuffPost points out, Patel never clarified whether his incorrect tweet, and its correction, were related to either of the two men local police questioned and determined had nothing to do with the shooting.
Now, according to Donald Trump on the curvy couch at Fox & Friends, there’s a third person in custody. Perhaps this one might stick?
The federal investigation into Kirk’s murder hasn’t done a lot to restore confidence. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) also described Patel’s performance as “amateur hour,” telling HuffPost Thursday, “[Patel] was doing a running commentary. Historically, the FBI keeps its mouth closed until it believes it’s the right time and the right message.”
By Thursday morning, The New York Times reports (gift link) Patel may have been feeling some heat under his grifting ass; he held a “tense” online meeting with some 200 FBI agents who hadn’t been fired for doing their jobs yet. During the meeting, Patel and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino “made it clear they were under intense pressure” to catch the suspect. Unnamed insiders old the Times that the intensity of their demands for results suggested the two were a little desperate to show that they could handle their damn jobs. (We are paraphrasing just a bit.)
Patel griped that it had taken almost 12 hours for a photo of the suspected killer to be shown to him, and said he wouldn’t put up with any more “‘Mickey Mouse operations,’ an official on the call recounted. It was one of his few utterances without profanity, the person added.” Poor Kash, all cussy and it isn’t even getting results. (Although, again, perhaps now? We are going to have to wait and see!)
It’s not clear to what degree the federal investigation into Kirk’s murder have been hindered by mass firings at the agency in an attempt to purge anyone who so much as touched a piece of paper about the January 6 investigation or the criminal investigations into Donald Trump, but the multiple waves of firings couldn’t have helped. In addition, the FBI seems to have been aggressively getting rid of women and people of color in leadership roles, including the forced early retirement of the special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City FBI field office, Mehtab Syed, who took the job after years of working her way up the ranks and becoming a top counterterrorism agent. But she was a woman, and Pakistani-American, so probably her decades of service and commendations were all DEI, you know.
On top of all the other confusion, the Wall Street Journal appears to have jumped the gun, or at least the ammunition, that was found in a wooded area near the building the shooter fired from. The Journal reported Thursday morning that law enforcement sources said ammo found in the rifle had been inscribed with messages “expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology,” but hours later walked back the claim a little, saying that a bulletin circulated early on “may not accurately reflect the messages on the ammunition.” The New York Times was a bit more specific, adding that
A senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that the report had not been verified by A.T.F. analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted.
In fast-moving investigations, such status reports are not made public because they often contain a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information.
No images of the supposed markings have been released, if they exist at all. The Trans Journalists Association released a statement reminding everyone that, duh, “transgender ideology” is a term mostly used by anti-trans bigots to imply that being trans is “a political choice rather than an innate identity.” Needless to say, even with the cautions from law enforcement that this is most likely a red herring, online weirdos are still insisting it’s now been 100 percent proven that the shooter was a trans leftist Marxist radical.
(Robyn, who follows these things for us, tells us that online sleuths of the disturbed variety have two people whose lives they are in the midst of destroying — a trans woman who looks nothing like the released picture of the eagle-flag-bedecked shooter, because she lives in Utah and made a song called “Charlie Kirk Dead At 31” that she removed from Soundcloud after the shooting, and a random guy who debated Kirk one time that some confused people think is also a trans woman.)
Also yesterday, the FBI released surveillance images of the person who may be the shooter, asking for the public’s help in identifying him. The subject appeared to be a college-aged male wearing a black shirt with a flag and eagle on it, as well as a baseball hat. Later in the day, a second set of photos — none showing the person’s face too well — was released.
Thursday evening, the FBI and Utah officials held a news conference to release video of the suspect dropping from the roof to the lawn of the campus building from which he fired a single bullet at Kirk.
That briefing had been scheduled for the afternoon, but it was suspended with little notice due to “rapid developments” in the investigation, or at least that’s what authorities said. And now Trump claims a suspect is in custody.
We do know that before the presser took place, the plane carrying Patel and Bongino first had to arrive in Utah from Washington DC so they could be shown the shooting scene and listen to briefings, presumably with pauses to explain big words. They were both at the briefing last night, but neither of them spoke, and no questions were allowed.
No official announcement has been made on whether the afternoon presser was delayed solely to wait for Bongo and Kash to arrive and drool all over everything, but it’s as good an explanation as any the super-competent duo have provided.
If the suspect Trump claims is in custody is actually in custody this time, that may save Patel’s job for a few weeks before they make him an ambassador to Easter Island and get him out of their hair.
[HuffPost / NYT (gift link) / TJA / Hill / CNN]
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Well they’ve delayed the news conference, so they must have discovered the alleged shooter is a far right nut job and now they’re figuring out to deal with it.
OK, if you kept the livestream open, presser should start in 4 minutes, they say.
https://youtu.be/CiS5wXfXiKs