Kash Patel Meltdown Over FBI Jacket Derailed Major Investigation

FBI Director Kash Patel is so obsessed with maintaining the facade of power and authority that he wouldn’t even get off a plane to investigate the murder of his friend Charlie Kirk until someone got him a special FBI raid jacket—his specific size, and with all the right patches on it. 

A new report from a “National Alliance of Retired and Active Duty FBI Special Agents and Analysts” has revealed that Patel—just a day after Kirk had been killed—landed in Utah and refused to exit the plane until someone got him a medium-size FBI raid jacket. He ended up taking a female agent’s jacket. He then began to complain that that jacket didn’t have the proper patches on it, and he refused to leave the plane once again until SWAT team members gave him their patches. 

This report, which has yet to be independently corroborated, comes from someone the group calls ALPHA99, a “reliable, trustworthy, and competent” source. 

The FBI director had just landed at the scene of the murder of someone he claimed was a close friend, and he chose to throw a tantrum because he didn’t have the exact right jacket with the exact right patches, rather than just get off the plane and do his job. 

This is just one of many examples of the floundering FBI head’s misplaced priorities. Just last week, it was reported that President Trump was weighing firing Patel in the wake of his premature social media posts during ongoing cases, his use of a government jet for a date with his 27-year-old girlfriend, and giving said 27-year-old girlfriend a SWAT team for her security detail. 

These sound like things a politician’s teenage son would do, not the head of the FBI. That, and this meltdown over a jacket in the midst of a high-profile assassination–with a suspect who had yet to be charged—only beg more questions about the fitness of the least qualified FBI director in U.S. history.  

Read the full report here.

Donald Trump wants to take U.S. citizenship away from people he deems “criminals.”

Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday that “we have criminals that came into our country and they were naturalized maybe through Biden or somebody that didn’t know what they were doing.

“If I have the power to do it, I’m not sure that I do, but if I do, I would denaturalize, absolutely,” Trump said. In a follow-up question, a reporter asked Trump what he meant when he posted in support of “reverse migration” on Truth Social on Thursday.

“It means ‘Get people out that are in our country, get ’em out of here. I want to get ’em out,’” Trump said.

Since the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., by an Afghan refugee on Wednesday, Trump has gone on an anti-immigration tirade, pausing all asylum decisions and saying that he wants to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” on Truth Social.

In another post, Trump falsely claimed that “most” foreign-born U.S. residents “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels.” Data from 2022 indicates that immigrants per capita consume 21 percent less in public assistance than native-born Americans.

But that’s not of interest to Trump, or his adviser Stephen Miller, a racist and anti-immigration hawk whose fingerprints are all over these new policies and Truth Social posts. It’s clear that the Trump administration just wants fewer immigrants in the U.S. and is willing to challenge long-standing laws and the Constitution to make that happen.

Donald Trump’s fanboys are foaming at the mouth for the arrests of Democratic lawmakers following the president’s latest direction to “DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE!”

In the wee hours of Monday morning, Trump posted yet another screed not so subtly targeting a group of Democratic lawmakers who’d published a video urging members of the U.S. military and intelligence community not to follow illegal orders. His initial attempt was laden with typos, with Trump writing, “Ther [sic] are laws that affect our nation” before deleting, and then trying again.

“There are laws that impact our Nation,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Read Title 18, Chapter 115, Section 2387, ‘Whoever with the intent to interfere, impair, influence the loyalty, moral or discipline of the military and Naval Forces, … to be fined or imprisoned up to 10 years.’ Commander Kirk Lippold, U.S. Navy, Ret. This is right on point. DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE!!!”

During an appearance on Fox 5 Sunday morning, Lippold clarified that there was no legal basis to recall Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, despite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatening to do so. Lippold also stated that the president’s claim that the lawmakers had committed sedition was unfounded because they had not advocated for or used violence. Instead, Lippold cited federal law targeting those who act with the “intent to interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces.”

“And that is something the Department of Justice should be looking into,” he said.

It seems Trump intends to make his government do just that, and MAGA was overjoyed that the president was preparing to take action against his perceived political enemies.

“Arrest Mark Kelly!” wrote David Freeman, a right-wing commentator who goes by the name “Gunther Eagleman” on X.

Eric Daugherty, a right-wing commentator, wrote on X that Trump had “posted the exact US law that seditious Sen. Mark Kelly, and other Congressional Democrats, likely violated.”

“Make an example or it happens AGAIN,” he added.

Trumpworld is flailing as it tries to redirect blame for last week’s National Guard shooting onto the previous presidential administration.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem insisted Sunday that the suspected shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was vetted for asylum by the Biden administration—despite the fact that it was her department that granted the asylum request in April.

“I want to be very clear about this, because his asylum was approved in April of this year on the Trump administration’s watch,” said NBC News’s Kristen Welker. “Was there a vetting process in place to approve that asylum request?”

“The vetting process all happened under Joe Biden’s administration,” said Noem.

“But was he vetted when he was granted asylum? Are you saying he wasn’t vetted when he was granted asylum?” pressed Welker.

“Vetting is happening when they come into the country and that was completely abandoned under Joe Biden’s administration. That’s the irresponsibility that has completely devastated our country, Kristen, put us in such a dangerous position,” Noem continued.

“I don’t think people realized when Joe Biden was in the White House exactly how he was allowing our country to be infiltrated with people that we didn’t know who they were, some of them, we did know were dangerous and went after as soon as they came into this country, but under this program we could have up to 100,000 people that came in from Afghanistan that may be here to do us harm,” the Homeland Security secretary added.

Lakanwal, however, wasn’t just a known entity to U.S. officials—he was a foreign partner with U.S. intelligence services. He worked with the CIA as a partner in Afghanistan for more than a decade before U.S. troops withdrew from the region. Lakanwal, who entered the U.S. in 2021, always struggled with PTSD, his family told CNN.

He allegedly shot two members of West Virginia’s National Guard on the eve of Thanksgiving. U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries. The other victim, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, is reportedly in “very serious condition,” according to West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey.

Lakanwal is currently hospitalized and in custody.

Of course, West Virginia’s National Guard never would have been in Washington to begin with if Donald Trump hadn’t ordered them to occupy the city on false pretenses.

Trump ordered some 2,000 members of the National Guard to Washington earlier this year, blaming rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were actually from 2023.

The cherry-picked statistics misrepresented the state of crime in the nation’s capital, which, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department that was touted by Trump’s own FBI, had actually fallen last year by 35 percent.

Mere days before the shooting, a U.S. district judge ruled that Trump’s order “exceeded the bounds” of the Pentagon’s authority since the troops were being utilized for “non-military, crime-deterrence missions” without the express permission of the city’s leadership.

It looks like President Trump’s former lawyer Alina Habba is getting fired—again. 

On Monday, a judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit voted 3–0 to disqualify Habba as interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. 

The appeals court agreed with a lower court’s ruling that Habba was given the U.S. attorney position through a “novel series of legal and personnel moves” and was not legally able to take the job. 

“It is apparent that the current administration has been frustrated by some of the legal and political barriers to getting its appointees in place,” Judge D. Michael Fisher, appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote in the court’s 32-page opinion. “Its efforts to elevate its preferred candidate for U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, to the role of Acting U.S. Attorney demonstrate the difficulties it has faced—yet the citizens of New Jersey and the loyal employees in the U.S. Attorney’s Office deserve some clarity and stability.”

Habba was supposed to be booted from her position over the summer, as New Jersey federal judges decided to refuse to extend her 120-day appointment as U.S. attorney. But the Trump administration fired Desiree Grace, the U.S. attorney first assistant and Habba’s planned successor, before Habba’s appointment ended, leaving the role vacant. It then made Habba first assistant, allowing her to take the role of acting U.S. attorney without a Senate confirmation.  

The Trump administration bent over backward to try to get Habba the permanent U.S attorney position because it knows she’ll be a mindlessly loyal foot soldier. 

As Trump’s personal lawyer, Habba unsuccessfully defended him in his Stormy Daniels hush-money and E. Jean Carroll defamation cases. In her first 120 days as U.S. attorney, she drew public ire for claiming that the thousands of military veterans indiscriminately fired by DOGE were simply unfit and for attempting to prosecute Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for trying to enter a local ICE detention center. She has operated as an absolute partisan—but now she’s out of a job. 

This story has been updated. 

Donald Trump got an MRI during a visit to Walter Reed Medical Center in October, but doesn’t have a clue what was being examined.

Trump was asked by a reporter Sunday on Air Force One for details about the magnetic resonance imaging test, noting that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has called for the results to be released. The president responded by calling Walz incompetent and saying that the results were “absolutely perfect,” just like the phone call that got him impeached the first time. But he apparently couldn’t say exactly what was perfect.

“What part of your body was the MRI looking at?” one reporter directly asked.

“I have no idea. It was just an MRI. What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it. I got a perfect mark, which you would be incapable of doing,” Trump said.

Trump’s MRI came as part of an unexpected visit to the medical center only six months after his annual physical exam. MRIs are not routine, and are usually conducted to assess tumors, joint injuries, or heart conditions. But even when asked about it last month, Trump couldn’t say why he was getting the MRI or what was being looked at.

All of this raises further questions about that October medical exam. Why would Trump need to be given a serious test like an MRI six months after his physical? It seems to suggest that Trump received other, serious tests besides the MRI and that he’s hiding something.

The president constantly brags about passing cognitive and mental acuity tests, and Sunday’s remarks to reporters were no different. But the more he talks about his mind, the more it seems that he isn’t on the level.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted an AI image of popular children’s character Franklin the Turtle extrajudicially blowing up “drug boats,” just days after it was revealed he potentially committed a war crime of his own. 

Hegseth’s post—another installment in the GOP’s AI image fetish—is modeled after the cover of the Franklin children’s books, and reads “A Classic Franklin Story: Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.” It shows the turtle in full U.S. military combat gear, launching a missile at brown-skinned men in their boats from a helicopter. 

“For your Christmas wish list …” Hegseth captioned the post.

The Trump administration has killed at least 80 people in its attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea, claiming they are trafficking drugs to the United States. 

On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that on September 2, Hegseth gave a direct vocal order to kill every single person on an alleged drug boat off the coast of Trinidad. After the smoke cleared from the first strike, two people were left hanging onto the burning wreck of the ship, fighting for their lives. To comply with Hegseth’s instructions, the Special Operations commander ordered them to be bombed again, a “double-tap” attack that is widely considered a war crime. 

Hegseth spent the weekend defending his attack on a boat that posed no military threat to the United States whatsoever. 

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” he wrote on Sunday. “Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.… Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict—and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”

This isn’t a great defense of using wartime tactics to kill people the U.S. is not currently at war with. 

“I think it’s very possible there was a war crime committed; of course for there to be a war crime you have to accept the Trump administration’s whole construct here—which is we’re in armed conflict, at war,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen told ABC News on Sunday morning. “It’s either murder from the first strike, if their whole theory is wrong—and I think the weight of the legal opinion here is that they’ve concocted this ridiculous legal theory. But even if you accept their legal theory, then it is a war crime. And I do believe the secretary of defense should be held accountable for giving those kinds of orders.”

Hegseth’s bizarre post on Sunday was rightfully met with outrage.  

“Shouldn’t they be hanging off the boat asking to be saved and then you killing them anyways?” one user asked. 

The bill mandating the Department of Justice to release the Jeffrey Epstein files has been signed into law, but certain parts may still never be seen by the public.

That’s at least in part because the DOJ has been paying FBI agents nearly $1 million in overtime to work on the “Epstein Transparency Project” at a bureau facility in Winchester, Virginia. FBI Director Kash Patel has tasked nearly 1,000 agents on the project, which, according to internal reports, has also been referred to as the “Special Redaction Project.”

Between March 17 and March 22, the bureau spent $851,344, according to a Bloomberg report, and agents racked up 4,737 hours of overtime pay between January and July looking through the DOJ’s evidence on Epstein. This included the investigation into Epstein’s 2019 prison death, as well as “search warrant execution photos,” “street surveillance video,” and aerial footage.

The DOJ’s remaining, unreleased Epstein documents amount to nearly 100,000 pages, and Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi have told the FBI to flag every mention of Donald Trump. There are also 40 computers and electronic devices, 26 storage drives, more than 70 CDs, and six recording devices collectively containing over 300 gigabytes of data.

Physical evidence includes photographs, travel logs, employee lists, over $17,000 in cash, five massage tables, blueprints of Epstein’s island and Manhattan home, four busts of female body parts, a pair of women’s cowboy boots, one stuffed dog, a logbook of visitors to Epstein’s private island, and a list described as a “document with names,” which could be Epstein’s rumored client list.

It’s no secret that Trump, backed by his allies in Congress, fought long and hard to delay the Epstein files’ release, only to relent last month when Representative Adelita Grijalva was sworn in and cast the last needed House vote to authorize the release. This project, ostensibly to protect the privacy of Epstein’s victims and people not involved in his crimes, could also be a way to prevent exposing Trump and his allies when evidence gets released.

Two National Guard members were shot just blocks away from the White House Wednesday, and although the identity and motive of the assailant is still unknown, MAGA Republicans are already blaming Democrats for the shooting.

Right-wing commentators rushed to their social media accounts after the shooting to hurriedly (and baselessly) connect the violent incident to their political opposition.

Benny Johnson was one of many who attempted to link the shooting to a group of Democratic lawmakers who’d published a video urging members of the U.S. military and intelligence community not to follow illegal orders.

“Just a few days ago, six Democrats claimed President Trump was issuing ‘unlawful’ orders to the military and that troops must resist. Two National Guard Members were just targeted and shot in Washington DC.,” Johnson wrote on X.

Eric Daugherty, a right-wing commentator, also attempted to connect those Democrats’ message to the violence in Washington. “They say Trump is using the military as his ‘personal gestapo,’” he wrote. “Two troops were shot today, right outside the White House. This should send shivers down the spine of every American.”

Greg Price, another right-wing commentator, linked the shooting to one of the lawmakers in particular, Senator Elissa Slotkin. He wrote that she “went on TV last Sunday and claimed that National Guardsmen were going to start shooting at American civilians.”

Crucially, those Democratic lawmakers hadn’t said anything about citizens taking up arms—or even protesting—against the government. They didn’t even mention Trump by name. They simply advised those who had sworn an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution to uphold the nation’s laws.

Only Trump advocated for violence against the government, claiming that the Democratic lawmakers had committed sedition “punishable by death.”

Additionally, Alexis Wilkins, the country singer girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel—who has proved increasingly expensive for taxpayers— decided to lend her salient political voice to the discussion surrounding the shooting.

“While everyone on X is fighting, the left is still attacking people who wear the uniform and support this country simply for doing so. There are more important things in this world and far bigger enemies who actually hate us and do, in fact, want to kill us,” she wrote on X Wednesday, urging people to “pray.” So, thank you for that, Alexis.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that the Pentagon had “exceeded the bounds of their authority” by ordering troops into the nation’s capital for “non-military, crime-deterrence missions.” But she stayed her decision until December 11 in order to give the Trump administration time to appeal the decision. Following the shooting Wednesday, Trump reportedly asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy an additional 500 troops to the nation’s capital.

The condition of the two National Guardsmen was not immediately clear Wednesday afternoon, after West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey said he’d received “conflicting reports” about their health status. D.C. Metropolitan Police confirmed that one suspect had been taken into custody.

This story has been updated.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday barred Donald Trump from firing the director of the U.S. Copyright Office for the time being.

Shira Perlmutter will stay in her job, part of the Library of Congress, while the court rules on two related cases. Trump had made an emergency appeal to the court to get her removed immediately, which has worked in the past for the administration with other officials.

This time, though, Perlmutter’s position has the word “Congress” in it, and she argued in court that this meant she was part of the legislative branch of government and thus couldn’t be fired from the executive branch. Perlmutter’s lawsuit also noted that Trump disagreed with a report she authored, in which she said that tech companies would likely have to pay licensing fees to access copyrighted materials for artificial intelligence models.

“Today, the administration’s unlawful executive overreach was not greenlit by the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented Perlmutter. “We are pleased that the Court deferred the government’s motion to stay our court order in a case that is critically important for rule of law, the separation of powers, and the independence of the Library of Congress.”

The other cases the court is reviewing involve Trump’s removals of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Slaughter is challenging her firing, saying that Congress requires the president to show cause when firing members of independent agencies, but the court allowed Trump to remove Slaughter until the case is decided next month. Cook was allowed to remain in her position, and her case will be heard by the court in January.

In May, a number of Trump appointees showed up at the Library of Congress with a letter from Trump claiming that they were now in charge, only to be rebuffed by library officials who filed a lawsuit. For now, the president has been rebuffed from his attempt to take control of an independent library. But with the conservative bent of the current Supreme Court, it may only be a speed bump.