Trump official 'walking a fine line' by parroting president: ex-FBI agent

Former CIA officer and FBI agent Phil Mudd said that the FBI director is walking a fine line between the demands of President Donald Trump and those who work under him.

FBI Director Kash Patel appeared before the Senate on Tuesday, where he engaged in a number of truly bizarre conversations about crimes that confused even Republican lawmakers.

But one key point turned back to the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump during the 2024 election in Butler, Pennsylvania. Patel seemed off-message from the president's claims on Truth Social.

"Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA," Trump posted a little before lunch EST on Tuesday. "By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said. GOD BLESS AMERICA — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

What Trump said was far off from what Patel answered to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As CNN co-host Boris Sanchez explained, Patel "reiterated there was no evidence that the man who tried to shoot President Trump, then candidate Trump, was working with anyone."

It prompted Sanchez to question why Trump is now saying that the former FBI director should "pay a price." Trump has been going after former FBI Director James Comey personally, but Wray was Trump's own hand-picked nominee for the post.

"Well, I think the FBI director is walking a fine line. I assume the president is watching at least some of this testimony, looking for evidence that the FBI director is not repeating what the president has said," Mudd suspected.

"But there's a simple story here, Boris, and that is a lot of people worked on that investigation," Mudd continued. "That is not only investigators and agents, that is a lot of analysts, that is a lot of state and local police officers. There's other agencies, for example, Homeland Security, Secret Service is involved. You multiply that investigation out by hundreds of people."

Mudd said that Patel runs the risk of being trashed by those working for him if he lies that no law enforcement work was done.

"If Patel gets out there and starts to say things that the investigation didn't uncover, he's going to get undercut by the organization," the ex-agent said. "So when he's talking about what the facts say, that's not only the facts, that's the people who worked on it who will speak if he says something that violates what they know about the facts. The president says one thing, but Patel has to pay attention to what the workforce is saying."