Maggie Haberman Shades ‘Pretty New’ Trump FBI Director Over Charlie Kirk Aftermath
New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman ran through a litany of criticisms on how Trump FBI Director Kash Patel handled the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing.
The political and media world were stunned when news broke Wednesday afternoon that Kirk had been shot during an event at Utah Valley University by a gunman. Hours later, news broke that Kirk died from the injuries he sustained in that shooting.
Director Patel came under fire for issuing a (later-retracted) statement claiming the shooter was in custody, which turned out not to be true. After a 33-hour manhunt, suspect Tyler Robinson was taken into custody after his family turned him in.
On Friday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, anchor Kaitlan Collins asked Haberman about the criticism being leveled at Patel:
COLLINS: So, it was kind of surprising, actually, to hear the President announce it this morning. Obviously, it moved quickly because of the family’s involvement. Some on the right have been criticizing the FBI director, who was there with the Governor today, about basically how he’s been handling this.
HABERMAN: Yes.
COLLINS: Steve Bannon is who I’m thinking of. I want people to listen to what he had to say on his show today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, EXECUTIVE AND FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: I don’t know why Kash flew out there, you know, thousands of miles to give us, Hey, working partnerships and our great partnership in Utah.
OK, got that. No offense to the law enforcement guys in the future of this. The public assumes that you’re working together as partnerships.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a left-wing Antifa- affiliated or Antifa-aligned person, OK? We want to find out about him. We want more details about him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: I didn’t hear law enforcement say Antifa today, when they were talking about what they did know about him.
HABERMAN: Yes.
COLLINS: Obviously we are — I mean, they’ve only had him for less than 24 hours, so we’ll see how that plays out.
But I wonder, given Kash Patel flew out there, which Andrew McCabe said is unusual for the FBI director, typically, to do. What you’ve been hearing about the role that he’s played in this, the confusing messages about a suspect in custody, a person of interest that were contradicting what other people were saying.
HABERMAN: Yes, look, I mean, just first of all, as you noted, there has been a significant uptick in political violence. There have been Democrats who have been victims. There have been Republicans who have been victims. We still have a lot to learn about this.
And what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific, watching it. It’s still — I think a lot of people are still processing it, especially because this is — was so online. He has — in terms of people seeing it. He has two small children. That, I think, is factoring into some of the responses, in terms of people are learning things in real-time, very quickly, about what takes place with law enforcement these days.
And you have somebody, like an FBI director, who is very online, who comes from an online world, and is pretty new to law enforcement from this side, and there was a lot of frustration among Republicans that I have heard, and with administration officials, that there was such a lag time in capturing this person who, as we said earlier, was not caught by law enforcement directly or by their work. This was–
COLLINS: Yes, it was his family.
HABERMAN: This was his family turning him in. A lot of time lapse between the shooting, and the first claim that there was somebody in custody, which was all over the internet, then that wasn’t the person. Then Kash Patel posted on X, We have the person in custody. And then two hours later, was actually, that person is released.
There is a reason that things like that don’t happen. There is also a reason Steve Bannon is correct, that usually you see the FBI director kind of head-down, trying to figure out what’s what. Not flying around this way.
Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.
