FBI Director Kash Patel is getting heat from a former bureau official for his handling of the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie.
During a Tuesday appearance on Fox News, Patel told host Sean Hannity that “substantial progress” had been made in the probe and authorities had identified “persons of interest” in connection with the 84-year-old’s apparent abduction.
However, shortly after his interview, a man detained by authorities for questioning over Guthrie’s disappearance was released from custody.
On Wednesday’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” MS NOW national security intelligence analyst Christopher O’Leary, who served as a senior executive at the FBI’s counterterrorism division, called Patel’s comments on the investigation “incredibly inappropriate.”
“He’s going back to the one skill that he thinks he has, which is self-promoting: diving into the media, diving into social media to compensate for his complete ineptitude at being the director of the FBI, which should not surprise anybody,” O’Leary said. “He has no leadership experience, no operational experience, no investigative experience.”
The former FBI official told Hayes that Patel’s judgment is “certainly flawed” and “his character and integrity and virtue are absent,” adding that he believes the director “has no loyalty to the Constitution or to the American public or to the mission of the FBI and its people.”
According to O’Leary, Patel’s leadership at the agency is “really costing victims,” with his lack of experience affecting not only the Guthries but “the American people more broadly.”
“Frankly, he’s unfit for the job, and a disservice to the country and to the people that he’s charged with leading,” the MS NOW analyst said.
O’Leary also explained that Patel’s efforts to rid the agency of those deemed insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump have drained the FBI of career officials with important expertise.
“I’ll point out that the person who would be in charge of this massive response would have been Brian Driscoll, the assistant director of the critical incident response group, until he was fired in August without cause,” he said. “This is one of the finest professionals I’ve ever worked with. And it’s these kind of decisions that Kash Patel makes — he’s not making good investigative decisions or good sound judgments.”
In the end, O’Leary still said he was “confident” the FBI would find out what happened to Guthrie and “bring some resolution to the case.”
“The FBI has done that for decades, long before it started being attacked by Kash Patel,” he said.
You can watch O’Leary’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”