OPERATION SUMMER HEAT

Keystone Kash Touts Achievements After Bungling Kirk Case

The results of Patel’s violent crime crackdown are in—three weeks after the FBI director was criticized over fumbling the search for Charlie Kirk’s assassin.

FBI Director Kash Patel is hyping up the bureau’s summer crackdown on violent crime, after he faced scrutiny over his handling of the hunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer.

In an interview Thursday with Sinclair’s Armstrong Williams, Patel went over some of the numbers that resulted from “Operation Summer Heat.”

The operation led to more than 8,000 arrests, which the FBI said includes “more than 30 fugitives wanted for murder.” Additionally, more than 2,000 guns, 44,000 kilograms of cocaine, and 321 kilograms of fentanyl were seized, according to the bureau.

Patel argued there had been an “explosion in violent crime” that happened in recent years “due to the prior administration’s lackadaisical approach against crime, and violent criminals took advantage of that.”

‘UNREAL’

MAGA Rages at FBI Chief After Charlie Kirk Shooting Posts

Janna Brancolini

“We have to attack the criminal enterprises where they start and their entire spider web of networks across the country, and that’s the beauty of Summer Heat,” said Patel, who on Wednesday fired an FBI agent trainee for displaying the gay pride flag. “We went everywhere.”

One violent crime that Patel took heat over during the summer was Kirk’s murder during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University. Although the suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was ultimately taken into custody after a family friend called authorities, the investigation by Patel was widely criticized.

Patel, for instance, had to walk back a post claiming the suspected shooter was in custody—an error that caused some on the right to call him “embarrassing,” “incompetent,” and a “horrible” FBI director. An anonymous White House official later told Reuters that his premature post was unprofessional, adding that Patel’s “performance is really not acceptable to the White House or the American public.”

The following day, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said the FBI “seems to be in somewhat disarray.”

Lawmakers also grilled Patel on the FBI’s troubled manhunt.

Even before Kirk was killed, Patel had faced criticism for his actions—including from those who had been on the inside. That morning, three former FBI agents sued, claiming Patel was focused on “politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people.”

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The former FBI agents also said that Patel had told them he had been instructed to fire agents who had worked on any criminal investigation into Donald Trump after his exit from office in January 2021.

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