Why Is Kash Patel Posting Evidence From a Live Investigation?

Trump’s MAGA influencer turned FBI Director Kash Patel is, once again, live-tweeting an active investigation.

A shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas on Wednesday killed two detainees and wounded a third. No ICE personnel were injured. Hours before the suspect’s identity was publicly reported, the FBI director took to X, publishing a photo of “evidence” related to the attack and speculating about the shooter’s motive, in a post with multiple grammatical errors and typos.

“While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an idealogical motive behind this attack (see photo below),” Patel wrote. The photo depicts a “recovered” shell casing bearing the phrase “ANTI-ICE.”

The suspect has since been identified in media reports as Joshua Jahn, who was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But the investigation is still ongoing.

And despite the seeming paucity of evidence on motive thus far, Patel saw it fit to label the incident a politically motivated “attack on “law enforcement.” It was “not a one-off,” he wrote, connecting it to a July attack at an ICE facility in the nearby Texas town “Prarieland [sic].”

The FBI director published the tweet less than five hours after the attack was first reported to police. Fourteen minutes later, he edited the post to fix two grammatical errors.

Observers on social media criticized the rashness of Patel’s post.

“Posting evidence during a very live investigation where you could plausibly have co-conspirators is very stupid and the head of the FBI should know better,” wrote Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State College of Law.

One would, apparently, be mistaken to expect Patel to have learned to exercise due restraint after drawing widespread criticism for his hasty, misleading communications in the immediate wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this month.