The FBI faced accusations of “rampant lawbreaking” from an ethics watchdog after it deleted a video promoting FBI Director Kash Patel that singled out Democratic candidates.
The charge came Thursday from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed a federal complaint over the video.
The FBI’s rapid response account posted the video on X on Tuesday, The Hill reported. The bureau has since deleted it, and the post is no longer available. The FBI did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment.
“It looks like the FBI took down the video we filed a Hatch Act complaint about earlier this week,” the group wrote on X. “This rampant lawbreaking cannot continue, even if they backtrack when called out.”
Experts say the video violated “electioneering” laws, including the Hatch Act, that bar federal employees from making political statements in their official roles, according to The Hill.
Donald Sherman, the watchdog’s president and chief executive, wrote on X on Wednesday that the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that investigates Hatch Act violations, had opened an investigation at the group’s request. He gave the case file number as HA-27-000006.
The video, which ran more than two minutes, labeled several prominent Democrats as part of the “defund the police crowd,” The Hill reported. Among them was Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, who appeared on screen as “Progressive Democrat, Senate Nominee.”
It also credited Patel with arresting violent criminals and seizing fentanyl, and it showed him walking away from a helicopter with Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to the outlet.
“When the attack on law and order failed, America needed the badge back on offense. Kash Patel’s FBI took the lead … Americans were left exposed. Kash Patel’s FBI is taking safety back by force,” the narrator said, according to Sherman’s thread.
Sherman wrote that the video closed with the FBI’s official seal.
“Although the video does not direct viewers to vote for or against a candidate, its message that the candidates’ policies ‘failed’ and ‘Americans were left exposed’ is advocacy against their election that violates the Hatch Act,” he argued.
“The video’s mention of El-Sayed as ‘Progressive Democrat, Senate Nominee’ clearly invokes the election. He is not a current gov’t official & his inclusion has no other purpose than to advocate for success or failure of a partisan candidate – a clear Hatch Act violation,” Sherman added.
“If you are referencing political parties in a gratuitous way, in an inflammatory way, if it’s made close to an election, if it’s framed as an attack on a political party, that’s going to be political activity, and you need to be aware of how that’s going to run afoul of the Hatch Act,” Delaney Marsco, director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said, according to The Hill.
“It shouldn’t shock anyone that this is not compliant with the Hatch Act,” Marsco said.
The video came shortly after Patel appeared on Fox News late last month and suggested how Americans should vote in the midterm elections, The Hill reported.
“You may want to vote for people who back the blue, who fund law enforcement, who put terrorists and rapists and drug dealers in prison where they belong, and who manhunt people who wish to harm our way of life around the world, like this FBI does, thanks to President Trump,” Patel said.
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