There's some fake news about FBI
Director Kash Patel and President Donald Trump. We’re in the era where
everyone who wants, or thinks, they’re ‘in the know’ is mouthing off to
the press. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Patel wants a
direct line to the Oval Office, which deviates from department policy.
It’s seen as a move to circumvent Attorney General Pam Bondi (via WSJ):
Among Kash Patel’s first questions as FBI director was one that underscored who was now in charge.
What
was the best way to call the Oval Office on a secure line from both his
office at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and from home, Patel
asked officials, according to people familiar with his inquiry.
While
every FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover has taken pains to keep the
White House at arms length, the new Trump administration has taken the
opposite tack, working to bring the traditionally independent ethos of
the FBI and Justice Department firmly within the president’s grasp.
Patel’s
determination to keep in close contact with President Trump himself is
an arrangement outside the traditional chain of command in which the FBI
director reports to the deputy attorney general, and the president
usually talks only to the attorney general.
It is but one example
of how on matters big and small administration officials including
Patel and senior officials at the Justice Department have deferred to
Trump and his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller since taking office,
the people said. Miller has regularly talked to top officials at the
Justice Department, including about the FBI, the people said.
And this entire ‘secure line’ nonsense was shot down by the FBI’s Assistant Director for Public Affairs, Ben Williamson: 
But
let’s return to the panic embedded in this piece. There are too many
qualified people at the Justice Department who will do their job and
enforce the laws—is that the main gripe? Complete institutional control
is yet to be accomplished, as we saw with the botched rollout of the
Jeffrey Epstein files, which proved to be a massive pile of retreads
from already public documents.
Give this new crew some time.
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