Nightclubs over national security: FBI Director Kash Patel under fire for questionable work conduct, alleged internal crisis

Indian-origin FBI Director Kash Patel has recently come under fire after a former bureau official alleged that Patel had been spending more time at nightclubs than at work.

In a televised conversation on Friday with Joe Scarborough and Jonathan Lamaire, host of MSNBC's chat show 'Morning Joe', former counter-intelligence official Frank Figliuzzi explained that Patel's disappearances were becoming a bit too common at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington D.C.—the headquarters of the FBI. 

“Reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,” he said, claiming that the Trump administration's prized pick for the FBI had driven it to a state of “chaos”, having changed the frequency of his briefings—from daily to biweekly—and constantly travelling back and forth from Washington to his house in Las Vegas. Reports suggest that he also works from home more often.

Now an author, Figliuzzi is a veteran law enforcement agent, who was appointed as the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division by Robert Mueller (then the Director of the FBI) in 2011, where he served 25 years as a special agent, having directed numerous espionage investigations. 

“So this is both a blessing and a curse, because if he’s really trying to run things without his experience, without any experience level, things could be bad. If he’s not plugged in, things could be bad. But he’s allowing agents to run things so we don’t know where this is going ... the one word that keeps coming back at me from inside is that the building is chaos,” he explained.

Figliuzzi's allegations come in the wake of a formal request made to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) by Senate Democrats, requesting a review of the FBI Director's personal flights with government aircraft, as per a CBS News report, citing GAO and congressional sources. Patel also faces backlash for his controversial move to have the FBI perform polygraph tests on agents to pinpoint the unauthorised release of information to journalists.

With Patel already under the lens for his flight records and controversial polygraph system, it is only a matter of time before FBI and/or government officials probe his questionable behaviour too.  

World