President Donald Trump on Monday attempted to bail out bumbling FBI Director Kash Patel after his embarrassing blunder in the investigation of a mass shooting at Brown University on Saturday.
Patel, 45, announced Sunday that the FBI had tracked down a person of interest in the shooting in Providence, Rhode Island, which left two people dead and nine injured.
However, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said during a Sunday night press conference that the evidence “now points in a different direction” and that local authorities had released the man, a 24-year-old from Wisconsin, multiple law enforcement sources told NBC News and The Washington Post on Sunday.
Trump swooped in during a press conference in the Oval Office on Monday and tried to absolve his appointee of any blame.
After a reporter asked whether Patel had explained why it has been so difficult for the FBI to identify the shooter, Trump replied: “Well, it’s always difficult. So far we’ve done a very good job of doing it… they’ve done it in record time,” he said.
The president then attempted to shift responsibility onto the university itself.
“You’d really have to ask the school about that because this was a school problem,” Trump said. “They had their own guards, their own police, their own everything. But you would have to ask that question to the school and not to the FBI.”
Trump repeated that Patel’s agency was second to local and university authorities.
“The FBI will do a good job, but they came in after the fact,” he said.
Typically, cases that fall under FBI jurisdiction include high-profile or large-scale violent crimes, terrorism, and domestic extremism incidents. In such cases, the bureau works in partnership with local law enforcement agencies, including university police departments.
“This FBI will continue an all-out 24/7 campaign until justice is fully served,” he added.
This is just the latest widely criticized investigation under Patel. Dubbed “Keystone Kash” after the bumbling police troop of silent movie fame, Patel has faced sustained criticism over his leadership of the FBI since assuming his post in February.
After the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, Patel declared on X that the suspected killer of Turning Point USA’s founder was in custody shortly after the shooting on a Utah college campus—a claim he was forced to walk back less than two hours later after local officials denied it.
The suspect in Kirk’s death, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was arrested days later after a family friend tipped off authorities. White House sources later griped to Reuters that Patel’s online antics were “unprofessional,” adding that his “performance is really not acceptable to the White House or the American public.”
Patel’s string of missteps—including commandeering a government jet to fly to Pennsylvania for what he described as a “date night” with his girlfriend—has fueled rumors that he could be on the chopping block. Reports have suggested his behavior has become an embarrassment to Trump, a claim the White House has repeatedly denied.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI and the White House for comment.
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