Miranda Devine: Kash Patels FBI promotion of MAGA villain Steven Jensen sends the wrong message
The promotion of Steven Jensen, the architect of the FBI’s overzealous January 6 investigation, to head the Washington Field Office has confounded Trump supporters and crushed their hopes that new FBI Director Kash Patel would reform the bureau and root out those who targeted Donald Trump and his supporters.As the section chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section at FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, from 2020 until October 2021, Jensen also oversaw the FBI’s controversial operations targeting parents at school-board meetings and Catholics going to traditional Latin Mass.Plucking him from relative obscurity in South Carolina to head the FBI’s most powerful field office sends exactly the wrong message.It has caused consternation across the spectrum, from Judicial Watch and the Heritage Foundation to FBI whistleblowers and J6’ers guilty of misdemeanor trespass because they walked through an open door.While a source close to Patel swears that the director has a good reason to elevate Jensen that will be clear “this week or within a month,” neither he nor his deputy Dan Bongino agreed to an interview and the FBI has refused to comment on the issue.They hope the furor will blow over.But FBI whistleblowers who put their careers on the line to expose the weaponization of the bureau feel betrayed.“Steven Jensen weaponized the FBI to persecute Americans over January 6th,” says Steve Friend, who blew the whistle to Congress about dangerous and unnecessary SWAT raids on cooperative misdemeanor suspects and the manipulation of statistics to make the so-called “domestic terrorism” threat from that day look more widespread than it really was.After nine years as an FBI agent, Friend resigned after five months of unpaid indefinite suspension for refusing to participate in a J6 raid and is currently unemployed.“Jensen’s promotion to head the Washington Field Office is analogous to placing Anthony Fauci in charge of Health and Human Services,” he s...