Eager for Center Stage, Patel Casts Aside Caution in Statements as F.B.I. Leader

A heinous act of violence. A faceless killer on the loose. A desperate manhunt. An F.B.I. director with a finger poised over the “post” button on his social media account.

These circumstances collided over the weekend during the search to find the suspect who opened fire on a Brown University classroom, killing two people and injuring nine others. They came after Kash Patel, the bureau’s self-promotional top official, reported on X that his agents had apprehended “a person of interest in a hotel room” in Rhode Island, acting on a lead from local law enforcement.

Little or nothing seemed to come of it. The person was released a few hours later, in an outcome that was awkwardly reminiscent of an earlier moment. In September, Mr. Patel announced that the F.B.I. had helped capture the person who gunned down the conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah, only for that to be a dead end.

In October, Mr. Patel again jumped onto X to trumpet the F.B.I.’s work in thwarting a potential terrorist attack in Michigan, blindsiding Justice Department lawyers, who had yet to file criminal charges. The move infuriated some prosecutors, according to people familiar with the episode.

Mr. Patel’s impulse to seize the spotlight and publicize the work of the bureau under his leadership has revived questions about his competence and his future in the administration. It has added to the growing criticism over his recreational travel, his use of a SWAT team to protect his girlfriend and his handling of the Epstein files.

Mr. Patel should “take a lesson” from local officials and “not jump the gun” in announcements, Representative Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat, told CNN on Monday, echoing widespread criticism of Mr. Patel’s post over the weekend.

Yet even if Trump officials have privately criticized Mr. Patel for embarrassing the administration, particularly over his use of government assets, rumors about his firing or forced resignation have yet to materialize. In fact, Mr. Patel has recently told people in his orbit he intends to stay on at least through the 2026 midterm elections, while acknowledging that the president could change his mind at any time.

One factor perhaps working in Mr. Patel’s favor: Mr. Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, considers Mr. Patel to be a compliant purveyor of his directives on personnel and policy matters, according to several people familiar with the situation who discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity.

The fate of Mr. Patel’s top deputy, Dan Bongino, another incendiary former podcaster and longtime Trump loyalist, appears to be more settled, though not entirely certain.

Mr. Bongino has said he plans to leave his job as soon as this week or as late as mid-January, according to three people with knowledge of his plans.

One sign it might be sooner rather than later: Mr. Bongino has been sending office knickknacks and other possessions back to Florida, where he intends to resume his lucrative career as a pro-Trump media broadcaster in time for the midterm elections, they said.

But Mr. Bongino’s departure plans, like his brief tenure at the bureau, have been steeped in vacillation and melodrama.

This month, Mr. Bongino suggested to associates that he might go out on a high note by sharing his plans to step down at a news conference announcing the capture of a suspect in the planting of pipe bombs near the party headquarters of Democrats and Republicans on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. He even went out of his way to mend fences with Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom he had accused of bungling the investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to people briefed on the exchange.

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Mr. Bongino’s tenure as the second in command at the F.B.I. has been marked by public statements that veer from pride to defiance to defensiveness. He has turned to social media in an effort to justify the administration’s actions, and appease many in his podcast audience who thought he had backed away from the brash promises he made before he took the job.

This month, he acknowledged the tension between his current and former roles.

“I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions, that’s clear, and one day I’ll be back in that space,” he told Sean Hannity on Fox News. “But that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”

Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino have upended the carefully cultivated image of F.B.I. leadership as tight-lipped professionals who avoid, whenever possible, publicly commenting on open cases or even the suggestion that they are allied with any party or politician.

Both men have relatively thin law enforcement résumés, but deep experience and savvy in the hey-look-at-me world of Trump allies.

If previous leaders confined public statements to congressional testimony and left investigative updates to subordinates, Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino have relished the chance to serve as personal conduits for information and solidify their legitimacy as lawmen.

Mr. Patel, in particular, has often raced to pop new information on social media in a bid to be first. In doing so, however, he has deprived himself of the shield that subordinates provide when the information they offer turns out to be wrong.

In a sign of the growing tensions between the leaders of the F.B.I. and its rank and file, the agents’ association said the leadership was barring agents from paying dues automatically through their paychecks.

In a message sent to members on Monday, the F.B.I. Agents Association said “we were told that Director Patel will no longer allow Special Agents to pay their F.B.I.A.A. membership dues via payroll deduction,” ending a decades-old practice.

“Rest assured,” the message continued, “the F.B.I.A.A. is an organization for our own, by our own, and we are not going anywhere.”

After the Kirk misstep, Mr. Patel called out supervisory agents for failing to fully brief him on developments in the case, telling a group of them that he would not tolerate any more “Mickey Mouse operations.”

At the same time, Justice Department officials pressed Mr. Patel to clear public statements and social media posts with agents and supervisors to ensure the accuracy of the facts he was transmitting.

That seems to have held in the Brown manhunt. Mr. Patel’s long post on Sunday morning essentially shared a status sheet given to him by local F.B.I. field agents, according to an official with knowledge of the situation who discussed internal matters on the condition of anonymity.

In his post on X, Mr. Patel referred to the individual taken into custody as “a person of interest,” a neutral description that could apply to either a witness or a criminal. He was not nearly as careful in the aftermath of the Kirk killing, calling the person detained and released as “the subject for the horrific shooting today,” a term that suggested the bureau had captured the killer.

By Monday, the attention in the current case was shifting away from Mr. Patel and toward the evidence, including newly released video of the suspect, which could help resolve a crime that has put Providence on edge.

By nightfall, it was not Mr. Patel who served as the F.B.I.’s messenger, but Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s field office in Boston, who offered a $50,000 reward and assurance his team was working closely with state and local law enforcement officials.

The gunman should be considered armed and dangerous, he said, and F.B.I. technicians were “documenting the trajectories of the bullets to reconstruct the scene.”

Adam Goldman contributed reporting.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.

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