
WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel may not have been part of a Signal chat in which other Trump administration national security officials discussed detailed attack plans. But that didn’t spare him from being questioned by lawmakers this week about whether the nation’s premier law enforcement agency would investigate. Patel (pictured) made no such commitments during two days of Senate and House hearings, instead testifying that he had not reviewed text messages inadvertently shared with the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic. Even as President Donald Trump insisted that “it’s not really an FBI thing,” the reality is the FBI and Justice Department for decades have been responsible for enforcing Espionage Act statutes governing the mishandling of national defense information.