During a Senate hearing to review the FBI’s FY2026 budget request, Director Kash Patel was forced to admit that, despite the law requiring it, he had no such request ready to review.
This surprising development came during an awkward back-and-forth with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking Democrat and Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees and approves budget requests.
Senator Murray reminded the FBI Director that the budget request was legally required “last week,” and after the director responded, she surprisedly added, “And your answer is you just understand you’re not going to follow the law?”
It’s actually a worse idea. There will still be, nominally, federal control, centralized in him. Other than that, every local and state FBI branch will act as, effectively, a terror cell - they work their own leads, make their own arrests on their own recognizance, and generally conduct business as they see fit. This makes for an incredibly dangerous form of secret police - they have no leaders above the local level, no real command and control, and they’re all tasked with only one thing: make less crime.
Imagine the Cheka, but they’re organized like al-Qaeda.
If their budget was zero’d out on the federal level where would the local FBI officers get their funding?