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?”

  • MortUS@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I feel like, if this were true, wtf are literally all the other countries’ intelligence and agencies doing to prevent such a thing?

    I’d like to think China, while mostly on Russia’s side, would not want Putin having control over the U.S.

    ofc most of NATO wouldn’t want that either.

    Is every other country incompetent, complicit, or is the U.S. just becoming its own oligarchy?

    • WizardofFrobozz@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      The US was warned about Russian influence before Trump’s 2016 election by intelligence agencies in Great Britain, Germany, Canada, France, Estonia, Poland, and Australia- and those are just the ones that spoke out publicly.

      They were called “fake news” and “DNC operatives.”

      Don’t pretend the rest of the world was surprised by this.

      • MortUS@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Well, I’m glad they spoke out publicly. Maybe they (World Governments) can put in a bit more elbow grease next time to prevent one of the world’s largest militaries from being bought by an authoritarian country at discount prices.

        The CIA can destabilize governments across the world.

        Russia can take over U.S. “Democracy” right in front of the world.

        I guess nobody has inside men anymore. Does Germany, France, Britian not have a CIA of their own?

        My point is that these World Governments have kinda gotten soft if this is where we’re at. Hell, the fact that Ukraine is still at war and not being physically backed is proof enough (though stepping in w/ Russia holding U.S. means that ship has sailed).

        • WizardofFrobozz@lemmy.ca
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          20 hours ago

          So… the fault lies with rest of the world who should have worked harder to save the US from itself while Americans plugged their ears and gave them the finger?

          • MortUS@lemmy.world
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            13 hours ago

            I mean, the fault lies with everybody - as we’ve expressed, the writing was on the wall the whole time.

            I don’t expect the ignorant children to prevent the adults from driving the car off the bridge (that’s a metaphor for most Americans).

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      22 hours ago

      china is frenemies with russia, they are definitely not on thier side. China does have russia by the balls though, since they bought up some of siberia.