During a Senate hearing to review the FBI’s FY2026 budget request, Director Kash Patel was forced to admit that, despite the law requiring it, he had no such request ready to review.
This surprising development came during an awkward back-and-forth with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking Democrat and Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees and approves budget requests.
Senator Murray reminded the FBI Director that the budget request was legally required “last week,” and after the director responded, she surprisedly added, “And your answer is you just understand you’re not going to follow the law?”
Fascists are inefficient.
He’s probably waiting for orders on how to do it, like everyone waiting for Hitler to wake up before countering the Normandy invasion.
And when Hitler woke up his first order was for breakfast and he chilled a bit before finally having his meeting. He misread the situation so fucking bad it is a miracle that even the enlisted men guarding him didn’t scream at his face.
BTW. The Allies took into account Hitler’s sleeping habits when timing their invasion. No joke.
I want to say he even habitually hanged/demoted/sent people who woke him to the Eastern Front.
President Xi, I am sending you Trump’s golf schedule by way of TikTok coded message.
Please, President Pooh-Bear, you’re our only hope.
He probably also fired the people who know how to make the budget in the first place.
Okay, so $0 for the FBI. Done!
That’s what Trump wants. Take note of the military and ICE budgets, however…
That’s what Trump wants.
It’s win-win. Either Dems don’t sign a blank check, and Trump uses this as an excuse to hand more power to the DHS. Or Dems do sign a blank check, and Trump uses it to fund an FBI dedicated to further dismantling the democratic state.
Right now we are seeing a power struggle between at least two groups of plutocrats in the US.
The FBI is not on Trump’s side. They’re not exactly our friend, but their defunding would give more power to Trump
The FBI is not on Trump’s side.
The director of the FBI is absolutely on Trump’s side. And anyone downstream of him who isn’t is getting weeded out.
His name is Kash but he doesn’t have any…
This is what mediocrity looks like
Mendacity.
He knew. He didn’t care. He just put out his hand and dared the Senate not to give him a blank check.
And he’s going to get that check, because Democrats more are terrified of looking obstructionist than of looking like they can govern.
I’m going to upvote just from the great usage of the word Mendacity
What does “legally required” here mean? I assume there’s supposed to be a punishment?
I’ve not read the laws, nor am I a lawyer, but I suspect that the budget laws say something like “The [FBI] shall provide a budget by [date]”, but there is no following section attaching a penalty as there are in criminal laws, so there is likely no recourse.
I imagine that this is the same as when you don’t have that report ready for the big meeting, or skipped out early before your end-of-shift duties were done: a reprimand from your boss and potentially getting fired… but his boss is, I think, Pam Bondi, the AG, in this case.
Theoretically Kash could be impeached or censured, as could Pam if she doesn’t act. But we know how well that will go. Until then, his inaction is illegal, but unlike some of trumps actions, which can be stayed or reversed via court, I don’t think you can stay inaction.
Maybe it means Kash isn’t the FBI director since he didn’t provide the budget. Whoever provides the budget first wins the title!
Can’t imagine how you’d expect an idiot like Kash Patel to do anything right at all.
His name is Kash but he doesn’t have any…
“I thought this was just a meet and greet”
Why would he follow the law? He can get insta pardoned if the mean lawmakers act like adults.
He’s too busy running his clothing brand Based.
The only thing saving this country from full on state-sponsored ethnic cleansing is the fact that they keep appointing the stupidest motherfuckers imaginable to key positions or power.
He kept repeating he’s following the law as if he could just make it up as he goes along. Such an absolute turd.
He’s like the kid who is trying to do a book report presentation on a book he didn’t even read.
He’s moving the FBI to Kash accounting.
Meh. Congresspeople always pretend to be upset about something to posture for their base.
Hold him contempt or stop clutching your pearls.
I’m sure Schumer will move quickly to form a search committee to form a task force with plans to complete a strongly worded letter by late 2027.
As opposed to what? Asking DOJ to issue a warrant for the director of the FBI?
that strongly worded letter will contain upwards of 12 strong questions. that way you’ll know he’s taking this serious
He’s super-cereal!
After a prolonged investigation taking many months and costing the taxpayer millions, the search committee regretfully concludes that they have been unable to find their balls.
I’m so tired of the theatrical outrage and shock and surprise. Of fucking course they’re working in bad faith. But no - let’s give all the fucking fascists the benefit of the doubt. You’re not allowed to be fucking surprised by this. It was all in the playbook. The playbook has been published openly on the internet since early 2020.
Its not tin-foil hat, it’s Putin. Its always Putin, using Skum and HitlerPig as his muscle.
When will people truly internalize that the two biggest foreign Sociopathic Oligarchs, have partnered up with the most prolific traitor in American history? None of them have any loyalty or patriotism toward America, and only see us as a big, rich, fat, lazy target to be ruthlessly exploited and looted, and it’s happening in real time before our eyes.
All they care about is money, and either Putin is paying them directly out of the Russian Treasury (HitlerPig would rape and murder his own mother for far less than a billion bucks, and Putin could order a lot more than that), or they’ve cut a deal to split the booty like the pirates they are.
When it’s not working, it’s working.
It’s not Putin. Plenty of home grown idiocy in the US. At the most, the Trump admin is a loosely bribed bunch of useful idiots.
Of course it’s Putin, and denying it marks you as an unserious person.
America (amd the Democratic world) has been at war with Russia since 1918, whether you want to admit it or not. This was an unarguable fact by EVERYONE ON THE PLANET for the entire 20th century. It was only when HitlerPig came along with his close ties to Putin that it became a controversial opinion.
Grow up and get some Critical Thinking Skills.
Lib qanon.
Except that its all documented history. Just because its a conspiracy doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Plenty of conspiracies have been true, and Russia’s long-term targeting of America has long been documented. It’s not like it’s a secret.
Trump has had an ongoing relationship with Russia going back to the Soviet days. He’s a filthy traitor, and the Putin and Skum aren’t even American. The only people who are denying it are idiotic MAGA Nazi traitors.
I feel like, if this were true, wtf are literally all the other countries’ intelligence and agencies doing to prevent such a thing?
I’d like to think China, while mostly on Russia’s side, would not want Putin having control over the U.S.
ofc most of NATO wouldn’t want that either.
Is every other country incompetent, complicit, or is the U.S. just becoming its own oligarchy?
The US was warned about Russian influence before Trump’s 2016 election by intelligence agencies in Great Britain, Germany, Canada, France, Estonia, Poland, and Australia- and those are just the ones that spoke out publicly.
They were called “fake news” and “DNC operatives.”
Don’t pretend the rest of the world was surprised by this.
Well, I’m glad they spoke out publicly. Maybe they (World Governments) can put in a bit more elbow grease next time to prevent one of the world’s largest militaries from being bought by an authoritarian country at discount prices.
The CIA can destabilize governments across the world.
Russia can take over U.S. “Democracy” right in front of the world.
I guess nobody has inside men anymore. Does Germany, France, Britian not have a CIA of their own?
My point is that these World Governments have kinda gotten soft if this is where we’re at. Hell, the fact that Ukraine is still at war and not being physically backed is proof enough (though stepping in w/ Russia holding U.S. means that ship has sailed).
So… the fault lies with rest of the world who should have worked harder to save the US from itself while Americans plugged their ears and gave them the finger?
I mean, the fault lies with everybody - as we’ve expressed, the writing was on the wall the whole time.
I don’t expect the ignorant children to prevent the adults from driving the car off the bridge (that’s a metaphor for most Americans).
Just typical American exceptionalism.
Oh they’re exceptional, all right
Are you proposing more election interference…?
I mean…if it prevents a fascist takeover…
I think respecting another country’s sovereignty is better.
china is frenemies with russia, they are definitely not on thier side. China does have russia by the balls though, since they bought up some of siberia.
I doubt a single one of our Democratic party elected officials actually sat down and read all of Project 2025.
That’s not what Israel is paying them to do
It’s not just AIPAC that’s the main problem (although it absolutely is a problem); the Democrats and Republicans both get massive amounts of “donations” from large PACs (including AIPAC), corporations, billionaires, etc. that they choose to represent them by any means necessary, since that’s who they get their paycheck from.
The only way to fix corruption for good is to permenantly make it so that corruption can never happen to begin with. Few individuals/stock traders shouldn’t be allowed to own/influence these massive corporations; they need to all be forcibly converted to worker-owned coops (which will also abolish the stock market), and we also need a hard wealth cap (something like $50 million tied to inflation in both liquid and non-liquid assets). Imagine if you got to both vote for who your manager is and also vote to fire them if they do a bad job.
Any system that is still capitalist by nature (like social democracy) will still have an elite few who are able to buy influence. Capitalism actively encourages this to occur by its very nature (as pro-capitalists would say: “greed is good”)
AIPAC is more of a symptom of a larger problem.
Don’t you remember all the stuff that Biden did to prevent this? \s
I think some of the young progressives probably did, but I still think the count is probably in the single digits.
