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FBI Director: Need More Funding 05/08 06:32
FBI Director Kash Patel broke with the Trump administration Wednesday over a
budget proposal that would dramatically slash funding for the bureau, telling
lawmakers, "We need more than what has been proposed."
WASHINGTON (AP) -- FBI Director Kash Patel broke with the Trump
administration Wednesday over a budget proposal that would dramatically slash
funding for the bureau, telling lawmakers, "We need more than what has been
proposed."
The 2026 budget proposal released on Friday calls for a funding cut of more
than $500 million for the FBI as part of what the White House said was a desire
to "reform and streamline" the bureau and reduce "non-law enforcement missions
that do not align" with the priorities of President Donald Trump. Patel warned
that such a cut would be harmful for the FBI as it reorients priorities to
focus on violent crime.
Asked to specify at a House Appropriations subcommittee which positions
would need to be cut if the funding reduction was implemented, Patel replied:
"At this time, we have not looked at who to cut. We are focusing our energies
on how not to have them cut by coming in here and highlighting to you that we
can't do the mission on those 2011 budget levels."
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, pressed Patel for details,
saying, "This is your budget. You have to have some idea of what you want to
fund or not fund, or where you can cut or not cut, and provide that
information" to the Office of Management and Budget.
"That's the proposed budget -- not by the FBI," Patel replied. "The proposed
budget that I put forward is to cover us for for $11.1 billion, which would not
have us cut any positions."
Patel also defended the FBI's plan to relocate about 1,000 FBI employees
from the Washington area to cities around the country, one of the first
initiatives he revealed upon being sworn in as director in February.
"Part of the process is not just putting people out sporadically, throwing
darts on the map. What we've done is we've taken a process with the (career
employees) at the FBI and said, 'Where are some of the most violent crime
places in America?'" Patel said.
Patel also clashed during one contentious exchange with Democratic Rep.
Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, who served as a House impeachment manager
during the second of two impeachment cases against Trump in his first term.
She asserted that the FBI had become "weaponized" under Patel and confronted
him over a book he had authored, saying a list of Trump adversaries he included
in it amounted to an "enemies list" and was being used by Trump as a "blueprint
for revenge."
Patel replied that he was the one who had been "targeted by a weaponized
FBI," presumably referring to the fact that he was among the people whose
records were secretly seized by the Justice Department years earlier as part of
media leak investigations when he was a staffer on the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence conducting an investigation into Russian election
interference.
"You should read the book because there's no enemies list (in) that book,"
Patel continued. "There are people that violated their constitutional
obligations and their duties to the American people, and they were rightly
called out. And you should give that book to every one of your constituents so
they can read" about it.
"I won't be doing that," Dean shot back.
"That's their loss," Patel said.
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