When Charlie Kirk was shot and killed last week,
one federal agency took center stage in the manhunt for his killer, the FBI.
What the FBI does is not just locate and find suspects,
but we also participate in eliminating subjects.
And what we had at the time was a subject in custody in relation to this investigation.
That's Cash Patel in a Senate Judiciary hearing this week.
Patel is the director of the FBI, and he was talking to Democratic Senator Peter Welch from Vermont.
The senator called out how in the hours after the shooting,
Patel publicly shared that they had someone in custody who turned out not to be Kirk Shooter.
You know, Candor,
I don't quite get that because
if we have our man that would suggest to the public that everybody can rest and relax and not then continue to provide information to the local law enforcement and to you.
So that was a mistake.
I don't see it as a mistake.
I see it as something working with the public to identify that there was a subject.
So if you put out a statement, this says we've got our man.
This was the first of two contentious hearings that Patel had in Congress this week.
Throughout both,
Patel defended himself over his handling of the Kirk investigation and his entire tenure at the FBI.
From the Newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports.