Former FBI Director and current political fiction author James Comey roasted Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel over reports he has been skipping morning briefings, framing it as a blessing in disguise.
Multiple outlets have reported that Patel has cut down on the frequency of the previously daily “director’s brief,” now holding them as little as twice a week.
“Officials who worked on the morning director’s briefings were told that the schedule was changed because Patel sometimes failed to arrive on time,” reported Ken Dilanian of NBC News.
On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, guest-host John Berman asked about those reports, and Comey suggested that due to Patel’s lack of experience, fewer briefings might be “better for everybody”:
BERMAN: Kash Patel is the director of the FBI. There are some reports he misses some morning briefings. He’s very visibly been at a lot of sporting events out there in the public. How concerned are you about that and what do you think the rank and file of the FBI sees there?
COMEY: I’m not the least bit concerned about that, given that nothing in his life will have prepared him to be FBI director. I’m fine if he is out doing other things and letting the career people make the decisions about operations, about priorities that would be better for everybody.
BERMAN: Do you think the career people are making the decisions behind the scenes?
COMEY: It’s hard for me to say. I mean, I’m sure they are because they know what they’re doing. So, if you’re going to go from being an outsider who knows nothing about the institution to the inside, you’re going to have to rely on the career people.
BERMAN: One of the things we led with tonight, and they’re still murky details about this, the possibility that federal prosecutors flouted a federal judge’s order. The federal judge seems to think that it’s possible that they flouted his order, and they may have deported some migrants to South Sudan. The idea of flouting a federal judge’s order seems to be something more common now, or more discussed or not as foreboding and maybe as it used to be. What do you see here? Do you see prosecutors willing to push the envelope more?
COMEY: I can’t tell. There’s certainly a lot of aggressive rhetoric in that way, but it is suicidal from a career perspective, for a lawyer for the United States Department of Justice to violate — knowingly violate a court order.
There will be consequences that will be life changing for that lawyer. And so, I don’t know whether we’ve moved from a lot of aggressive talk, which is characteristic of the Trump world to lawyers actually making that life changing decision.
Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.
