FBI Director Kash Patel Ludicrously Declares Trump DOJ ‘Will Always’ Defend Against Those Who ‘Attack Our Nation’s Capitol’

At a press conference Thursday, FBI Director Kash Patel — who was appointed by a president who pardoned hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters — made the ludicrous declaration that the Trump administration “will always refute it and combat it” when people “attack our nation’s Capitol.”

The topic of Thursday’s presser was the recent arrest of Brian Cole, a Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, committed mere hours before supporters of President Donald Trump swarmed the Capitol in an effort to derail the certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes for President Joe Biden.

Fortunately, the devices were discovered, and no one was injured, but the crime has baffled investigators for years.

On the first day of his second term in office, Trump issued sweeping pardons and clemency to nearly 1,600 defendants who had been charged or convicted for their roles in the Capitol riot, including many who were charged with violent assaults on the law enforcement officers defending the Capitol that day like the U.S. Capitol Police and the DC Metropolitan Police Department. Several of the pardoned rioters have since found themselves facing new criminal charges for unrelated crimes; one was fatally shot by a local police officer in Indiana for allegedly resisting arrest during a traffic stop mere weeks after his pardon.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Cole had been charged with a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 844, use of an explosive device, adding that search warrants were being executed and more charges could be filed later. She then introduced Patel.

“When you attack American citizens,” said Patel, “when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation’s Capitol, you attack the very being of our way of life. And this FBI and this Department of Justice stand here to tell you that we will always refute it and combat it. We will provide the safest country the nation has ever seen under President Trump’s leadership here.”

“When you attack our nation’s Capitol, we will always refute it and combat it?” Sure, if it occurs on Jan. 5, 2021, but not if it involves these people less than 24 hours later:

AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File

Patel thanked the “brave men and women of the FBI” and “the Metropolitan Police Department, the United States Capitol Police, our brave prosecutors at the Department of Justice,” along with Bondi and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for their “relentless work on this case” that led to Cole’s arrest.

The FBI director discussed the “numerous investigative leads” that helped them “safely secure [Cole] into custody,” adding that “we cannot do this sort of takedown in haste, because it endangers law enforcement.”

“This FBI will never allow law enforcement and prosecutors to be put in jeopardy,” Patel continued. “This execution was flawless in terms of teamwork, resilience, and good old-fashioned way of police, getting the job done.”

On January 6, 2021, law enforcement officers were in fact put in jeopardy during the violent attack on the Capitol.

About 140 officers were wounded during the riot, fifteen of whom required hospitalization. Documented injuries included concussions and other traumatic brain injuries, heart attacks, cracked ribs, shattered spinal discs, lung and respiratory system injuries, and injured eyes. Several officers required subsequent surgeries and long-term physical therapy. Some were medically unable to return to their jobs.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died after he suffered a series of strokes within hours of being pepper-sprayed by rioters, a death the Washington D.C. medical examiner found was from natural causes but added that “all that transpired [during the riot] played a role in his condition.”

At least four officers are known to have taken their own lives in the aftermath of January 6. An untold number have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and other mental trauma.

Trump’s pardons may have released convicted rioters from prison and ended any prosecutions still pending, but they did not and cannot erase the factual evidence of the events of that day that were live-streamed for the world to witness.

We have a trove of photos and videos, collected by journalists, members of Congress, and Capitol staffers; body camera videos and testimony from the police officers about the violent assaults and injuries they suffered — not to mention the rioters’ own social media posts, communications, and in-court testimony admitting what they had done. Besides the 172 Jan. 6 defendants who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers, hundreds more who were convicted of such offenses.

“When you let good cops be cops, this is what happens,” said Patel on Thursday.

Indeed.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.