Miranda Devine: Kash Patel's FBI Is Promoting and Rewarding a Villain Who Pursued J6ers and School Board "Terrorists"

I hope that Patel will stop this.

The promotion of Steven Jensen, the architect of the FBI's overzealous January 6 investigation, to head the Washington Field Office has confounded Donald Trump supporters and crushed their hopes that new FBI Director Kash Patel would reform the bureau and root out those who targeted the president and his backers.

The Washington Field Office is incredibly important. It cannot be given over to a leftwing Deep State zealot.

As the chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, from 2020 until October 2021, Jensen also oversaw the bureau's controversial operations targeting parents at school board meetings and Catholics going to traditional Latin Mass.

Plucking him from relative obscurity in South Carolina to head the FBI's most powerful field office sends exactly the wrong message.

It has caused consternation across the spectrum, from Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation to FBI whistleblowers and J6'ers guilty of misdemeanor trespass because they walked through an open door.

While a source close to Patel swears that the director has a good reason to elevate Jensen that will be clear "this week or within a month," neither he nor his deputy Dan Bongino agreed to an interview, and the FBI has refused to comment on the issue.

They hope the furor will blow over.

But FBI whistleblowers who put their careers on the line to expose the weaponization of the bureau feel betrayed.

"Steven Jensen weaponized the FBI to persecute Americans over January 6th," says Steve Friend, who blew the whistle to Congress about dangerous and unnecessary SWAT raids on cooperative misdemeanor suspects and the manipulation of statistics to make the so-called "domestic terrorism" threat from that day look more widespread than it really was.

Trump supporters like Julie Kelly and Charlie Kirk -- and Don Trump, Jr. -- seem skeptical of this story, and point readers to this article by John Nantz. Nantz says the only evidence for the claim that Jensen yelled at agents to be more aggressive hunting down J6ers is a single man's testimony, talking about what he remembered of a phone call made two years before his testimony. I guess Nantz is suggesting he may be misremembering who said what.

[The single witness George] Hill pointed to bias when categorizing cases as Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE), which represented a shift toward narrative led investigations, and away from fact-based tagging and prioritization of investigative resources. Hill was prompted to cite an example of this bias and referenced a "conference call with literally thousands of people listening." He admitted the alleged call took place almost two years prior to his testimony, then alleged that Steve Jensen lashed out about FBI Philadelphia's lack of aggressiveness with regard to J6 cases. Hill testified, "Steve Jensen said, 'You know, I don't give a blank. They're g*****n terrorists and we're gonna round them all up."

However, during questioning specific to Hill's allegation, Jensen was asked, "Mr. Jensen, do you recall ever saying anything along the lines of, you know, 'I don't give a blank, these people are g*****n terrorists, we're going to round them up?'" Jensen responded, "No." He was then asked, "Is that something you ever would have said?" Jensen responded, "No." He was asked, "Do you swear?" Jensen responded, "I don't."

That last answer is ambiguous on paper but apparently he was being asked "do you swear" as in "do you use profanity like g******n," not "do you swear you're telling the truth."

The other claim is about Jensen creating a "tag" used to categorize the allegations of terrorism at the school board meetings. This seems admitted, but Nance says this is a trivial clerical action. He just created a tag to file these claims under, as a blogger would create a tag to file stories about Obama under.

As to Jensen's diabolical plot to clap soccer moms in handcuffs and drag them by the hair into the labyrinth of the federal prison system, his testimony is dispositive. During the same congressional questioning, Jensen made it clear that his only involvement in Garland's infamous school board task force was the creation of the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag. As Jensen explains, "that tag was created to attach to any complaints that came in, SPECIFIC THREATS (emphasis mine) against school board officials, school officials or anybody else that would have participated in the school board meetings." After the creation of the threat tag, Jensen was transferred to the Training Division.

In point of fact, Jensen's testimony reveals a career FBI Agent who is extremely compunctious about proper predication, the preservation of First Amendment activity, focus on individual criminal activity (as opposed to group association), and close liaison with local and state law enforcement on matters unrelated to federal jurisdiction. He even defended the presence of Proud Boys at a school board meeting. Don't take my word for it. Read it yourself. Download the PDF and search the keywords, "Proud Boys."

In a slap-dash Blaze piece Tom Fitton had this to say, "For all I know, he's a good guy and we're all misinterpreting it." Ya think?

I don't know. It does seem to be pretty thin evidence and it seems unlikely that Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have suddenly called up David French's bull to take care of their wives.

posted by Ace at 02:11 PM

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