FBI Targets the Reporter Who Exposed that Kash Patel's Girlfriend Was Obtaining Free Perks From the Agency

Donald Trump has been itching to make reporting itself into a crime, and now some of his minions at the FBI are inching toward finding the way to do it: Label reporting as “stalking.” They used this approach in an investigation of The New York Times reporter who broke a story about FBI Director Kash Patel misusing agency resources for his girlfriend.

The Times itself reports:

The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said.

Those actions prompted concerns among some Justice Department officials who saw the inquiry as retaliation for an article that Mr. Patel and his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, did not like, and who determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation, according to the person briefed on the matter.

The scrutiny of Ms. Williamson is an example of the Trump administration examining whether to criminalize routine news gathering practices that are widely considered protected by the First Amendment.

The FBI’s premise seems to be that politically connected people enjoy extreme protections for their privacy, even in stories relevant to the abuse of public funds—while reporters enjoy no protections whatsoever. The government did not end up filing charges in this case, but the point of exposing this story is to prevent them from working up the nerve to do it.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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