Hackers connected to the Iranian government accessed FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email and posted materials — including photos and documents — taken from his account, a person familiar with the breach confirmed to CNN.
The hackers have published a series of photos of Patel from before he became FBI director that they claim were stolen from his personal email account. A source familiar with the incident confirmed the images’ authenticity.
The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022 and appear to include personal, business and travel correspondence that Patel had with various contacts.
The hack comes a few weeks after Kash Patel fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
They were ousted for a simple reason: Each was involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
As a result, Patel hamstrung the Washington, DC-based FBI counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which handles cases ranging from mishandling of classified documents to tracking foreign spies operating on US soil.
When confronted over the firings in Congress, Patel struggled to answer:
When you elect clowns, you get a circus.
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