The FBI is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Monica Witt, a former Air Force counterintelligence specialist charged with spying for Iran after defecting to the country, according to The Hill. Witt was indicted in February 2019 by a Washington, D.C., federal grand jury on espionage charges stemming from her defection nearly a decade ago.
Senator Chris Van Hollen pressed FBI Director Kash Patel at a Senate hearing on his reported heavy drinking, internal leak investigations, and the use of polygraph tests on FBI employees, according to The Bulwark. The exchange included questioning about an alcohol "AUDIT test," with Patel offering combative and evasive responses throughout.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Sen. Chris Van Hollen traded sharp words at a Senate budget hearing after Van Hollen questioned Patel about media reports of excessive drinking, according to NBC News. The source article does not include verbatim quotes from the exchange, but NBC News describes the confrontation as heated.
FBI agents interviewed current and former CIA officers at Langley last week as part of a grand jury investigation targeting former CIA Director John Brennan over his role in the 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference, according to NBC News. A 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation spanning three years, more than 200 witnesses, and over a million documents endorsed that assessment's findings as accurate — and special counsel John Durham filed no charges against CIA officers who oversaw it.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about allegations of a drinking problem during a Senate oversight hearing, according to NBC News. The article body does not contain verbatim quotes or specific figures from the exchange beyond the described confrontation between the two.
A federal judge has scheduled a July 15 criminal trial for former FBI Director James Comey on charges that a social-media photo — seashells arranged with the caption "86 47" — constituted a threat against President Trump, per The Hill. U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan, a George W. Bush appointee sitting in New Bern, N.C., set a June 5 deadline for pre-trial motions, including Comey's anticipated selective-and-vindictive-prosecution challenge. Comey's previous criminal charges were already dismissed once.
The pattern here is not new. Jefferson's Justice Department prosecuted Federalist editors under sedition theory. Nixon's DOJ surveilled and harassed political enemies it labeled threats. Each episode required decades of institutional repair. What distinguishes this moment is speed: a sitting administration has moved from dismissal to re-indictment of the same target on an interpretation of "threat" so thin that a seashell photograph carries the evidentiary weight. The courts — Flanagan among them — are the remaining friction point.