FBI Director Kash Patel sat through another grueling congressional hearing on Wednesday, where he forgot about one of the more notable mass shootings and hate crimes in recent American history.
Patel was grilled Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee about his handling of the Epstein files and the public relations mistakes he made during the investigation into last week’s fatal shooting of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. On Wednesday, Patel’s leadership was under the microscope again by the House Judiciary Committee.
When asked about the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charlestown, South Carolina, that killed nine Black parishioners, Patel struggled to recall the event.
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., asked Patel if he disputed that white supremacist Dylann Roof had carried out the horrific mass murder.
To which Patel replied, “I’m sorry, Dylan Ruth?”
“Roof,” Kamlager-Dove repeated.
“Roof? Can you give me some more information?” Patel asked.
“You’re head of the FBI, you probably know this. If you don’t know, that’s fine,” she said.
“You can give me a reminder. I’ve got a lot in front of me,” Patel said.
“It was national news,” she said. From there, Kamlager-Dove went on to list several other incidents of political violence perpetrated by right-wing extremists.
Asked whether he admitted or denied these incidents took place, Patel said, “I’ll take your presentation as accurate.”
The flub comes amid deepening political divisions in the wake of Kirk’s shooting last week. Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have been quick to blame the “radical left” for the attack despite the fact that no motive has been established yet.
Democratic lawmakers have pointed out that incidents of political violence in recent years have targeted people from across the political spectrum, including the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, in their San Francisco home and the assassination in June of Democratic Minnesota House Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, also in their home.
And studies like a recent one by the libertarian think-tank the CATO Institute have found evidence that political violence is not typically carried out by the politically left but the opposite: The study found that the political right accounts for 63% of all politically motivated killings since 1975 (excluding the 9/11 attacks). The study added that since 2020, “right-wing terrorists account for over half” of the 81 people killed in terror attacks on U.S. soil.
