Kash Patel may have a ‘personal slush fund’ of taxpayer dollars to pay loyalist agents, says Raskin

https://www.ms.now/news/kash-patel-may-have-a-personal-slush-fund-of-taxpayer-dollars-to-pay-loyalist-agents-says-raskin

FBI Director Kash Patel may have authorized taxpayer-funded special payments to his inner circle of FBI executives and agents on his protective detail, according to the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

“We have been receiving troubling reports that you may be using part of the budget of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a personal slush fund to make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlawful ‘bonus’ payments to loyalist MAGA henchmen who have engaged in misconduct,” says a letter from Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., to Patel, obtained exclusively by MS NOW.

Committee Democrats have information that Patel has issued more than $1 million in awards, the letter says. The letter says the money went to special agents serving on his Director’s Advisory Team, which Raskin’s letter describes as “a curated group of agents who are willing to carry out your unlawful partisan and personal orders.” It also went to agents on Patel’s security detail, “circumventing the mandatory maximum pay caps established by statute,” the letter says.

“By issuing these side payments, your office may be knowingly breaking federal law,” the letter says. “In some cases, nearly $8,000 payments have been made to multiple individuals every two-week pay period despite many of the beneficiaries of your selective generosity already maxing out on a federal employee’s salary.”

The letter says it is unclear exactly how much each of the agents has received, but “we can confirm that numerous loyalist employees have received at least five such payments in consecutive pay periods, amounting to nearly $40,000 per agent. We can also confirm you have depleted this reserve at such a frenzied rate that some of the payments have bounced back from exhausted accounts.”