Wray vs. Patel

FBI Director Christopher Wray spoke on 11-21-24.  His remarks included:

But when I look back over the course of my career in law enforcement, I would be hard pressed to come up with a time when so many different threats to our public safety and our national security were so elevated all at once. 

We're fighting violent crime that reached alarming levels during the pandemic and still plagues far too many communities, but we are making real progress. Last year, our Safe Streets and Violent Crime Task Forces arrested something like 50 bad guys per day, every day, all year long. 

We're also combating cyberattacks, targeting our critical infrastructure and American businesses, both big and small. In fact, when it comes to ransomware alone, we're investigating more than 100 different variants, each with scores and scores of victims. 

We're tackling the cartels pushing fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into every corner of this country, claiming countless American lives. That work includes nearly 400 investigations, and those are just the ones into cartel leadership and our seizure of enough fentanyl to kill 270 million Americans. Just in the past two years. We're also fighting to keep children the most vulnerable among us, safe from abuse and exploitation, arresting hundreds of predators and rescuing hundreds of kids every year. 

At the same time, we're rooting out foreign adversaries looking to steal our innovation, influence our elections, and export repression to our shores. When it comes to China, for instance, we've got something like 2000 active cases across every single one of our field offices. And of course, of course, we're disrupting terrorism, which remains our number one priority, a threat that was already elevated, but one that we've seen rise to a whole new level in the years since Hamas's brutal attack on Israel. In my time as director, we've successfully thwarted multiple terrorist attacks in cities and communities across this country, and each one of those could have had devastating effects. 

And we're doing this work day after day after day. And we're doing it. And we're doing it while facing challenges created by things like warrant proof encryption and violence that actually targets law enforcement at unacceptably high levels. And it's all coming at a time with the shortsighted prospect of budget cuts. The bureau is being asked to do even more.

FBI Director nominee Kashyap Patel said earlier this year:

He would "shut down" the FBI headquarters building in D.C. and "reopen it the next day as a museum of the 'deep state.'"

Former FBI and DOJ officials have repeatedly dismissed the "deep state" claims as false and politically motivated conspiracy theories.

Is it the Red Team or the Insane Red Team?  Stay tuned.

Update 12-14-24:  FBI Director Chris Wray announced he will step down prior to Donald Trumps inauguration.  Sane Red gone.