I am accusing him, rather, of showing a lack of candor in yesterday’s hearing.
The term “lack of candor” is one that has specific meaning in the FBI.
The result is that an agent who has been found to have responded with a “lack of candor” becomes useless to the bureau.
McCabe, the report found (rightly or wrongly), had shown a lack of candor on four occasions concerning a disclosure to the press.
At the bureau, agents who carry with them an “odor of mendacity” don’t last.
Employees of the FBI are disciplined for “lack of candor” under the Offense Codes Applicable to the FBI’s Internal Disciplinary Process. It is illegal to “knowingly provide false information when making a verbal or written statement, not under oath, to a supervisor, another Bureau employee in an authoritative position, or another governmental agency, when the employee is questioned about his conduct or the conduct of another person,” according to Offense Code 2.5 (Lack of Candor – No Oath). “Knowingly providing false information in a verbal or written statement made under oath” is prohibited by Offense Code 2point 6 (Lack of Candor – Under Oath). False statements, misrepresentations, failing to be completely forthright, or concealing or omitting a material fact or piece of information are all considered forms of lack of candor under both offense codes. “.”.
Michael Horowitz, Inspector General, Justice Department.
In light of the Department of Justice’s purge of career employees, which is now extending to the FBI, The Situation on Wednesday concentrated on Kash Patel’s particular risk among Donald Trump’s nominees.
I want to discuss Kash Patel’s honesty during his hearing yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, even though the scope of the ongoing FBI purge is still unknown—for the record, I suspect it will turn out to be far larger than has been reported thus far.
Judge Scott McAfee remarked sardonically last March that “an odor of mendacity remains” regarding the specifics of their relationship in response to the unlikely testimony of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. Neither Wade nor Willis were charged with perjury by him. “To uncover every possible instance of dishonesty from every witness or defendant ever presented in open court was not his job,” he wrote. However, he noted that “reasonable questions” about whether Willis and Wade “testilied untruthfully” still existed. “”.
We ought to say something along these lines regarding Kash Patel’s testimony, in my opinion. I want to be clear that I am not calling him a perjurer. I’m accusing him instead of being dishonest during yesterday’s hearing.
Within the FBI, the phrase “lack of candor” has a specific meaning. Agents are frequently fired for breaking this disciplinary code—two of them, actually. It covers more ground than either the federal false statements statute or perjury. A lack of candor can include, as stated above, “the failure to be fully forthright or the concealment or omission of a material fact/information,” even though these statutes require a statement to be literally false on a matter of material fact. “”.
The FBI employs this standard for one important reason: agents are required to testify in court regarding every facet of the investigations they carry out, and the government is unable to call witnesses who have been discovered to have interacted with less than complete candor during internal investigations. The Supreme Court’s decision in Giglio v. In the United States, prosecutors are required to show defense lawyers any evidence that could be used against a witness. According to the FBI, this includes “information about a component witness that includes dot.”. any misconduct, including a lack of candor, that casts doubt on the employee’s honesty or potential bias (emphasis added).
When an agent is found to have responded with a “lack of candor,” the bureau gains no use for them. It is therefore also the appropriate criterion to evaluate the testimony of a man who would lead a company that dismisses employees for dishonesty.
Patel repeatedly, terribly, and dramatically fell short of this standard.
Again, I’m not claiming that he perjured himself; that depends on the specifics of some of his statements and on information that I don’t have about what he knew at the time of his testimony. Either way, I’m not hoping for Patel’s blood or legal action.
However, it would be impossible to characterize his testimony as honest or candid.
To begin with, he frequently misrepresented his own statements when they were brought up. He feigned that they were misinterpreted. He acted as though the senators were misinterpreting what he meant. He acted as though they were only “snippets” of a more extensive argument that had a different meaning. In certain instances, he denied ever having said or written the things, telling the senators who were interrogating him that he did not have the remark in front of him. His testimony included numerous textbook definitions of “misrepresentations [and] the failure to be fully forthright,” though I’m not sure if any particular statement he made was a lie. “”.
In a Colorado court case, Patel also stated that Trump had given the go-ahead for 10,000–20,000 National Guard troops to guard the Capitol. The judge wrote, “The Court finds that Mr. Patel was not a credible witness.”. In addition to being irrational (since Trump only had command of roughly 2,000 National Guard members), his testimony that Trump authorized 10,000–20,000 National Guard members is wholly unsupported by any documentation. “.”.
In his testimony, he asserted that he had never implied that Jan was organized or planned by the FBI. 6. Or that he had merely brought up the topic. Numerous pieces of evidence imply that he did much more than that. Here is a catalog of some of it. Patel’s book Government Gangsters contains some of it, which is about a man named Ray Epps. In it, he talks about “all sorts of strange agitators who were at the Capitol on January 6 and stirred up the crowd to breach the Capitol beforehand but who have faced no consequences.”. “Epps was the most well-known,” he claims, but the FBI refuses to respond when asked if he is a “fed.”. He writes: “Every indication of a cover-up is clearly visible.”.
Legally, he implied, he could not discuss his own grand jury testimony. The individual in question has years of experience as a public defender and federal prosecutor. This information is not esoterica; is it really believable that he is unaware of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), which expressly excludes witnesses who testify before the grand jury? Any reasonable federal prosecutor or defense attorney is aware of this very basic criminal procedure.
He was informed that he had appeared on Stew Peters’ podcast numerous times, despite his claim that he had no idea who the man was.
I could continue—and continue. My argument, however, is not a game of gotcha, demonstrating that although Patel stated one thing, the evidence contradicts that. In my opinion, this testimony does not demonstrate a sincere attempt to “be fully forthright” and to avoid “the concealment or omission of dot.”. important information or facts. “.”.
The fact that Patel blatantly misled the committee on point after point is something that can be ignored, and many senators appear determined to do the same. However, the reality cannot be denied.
An FBI agent would be fired for such testimony. Remember the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on Andrew McCabe, who was the deputy director at the time, if you have any doubts about that. Whether correctly or incorrectly, the report concluded that McCabe had disclosed information to the media four times without being honest. That discovery—and nothing else—was the reason McCabe, a longtime agent with an outstanding career, was fired.
Agents who have a “odor of mendacity” about them don’t stay at the bureau. A director who doesn’t come with one is what the FBI deserves.
The situation will persist tomorrow.