FBI Director Kash Patel fired a top intelligence analyst who had worked on the bureau’s report on the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise—an assessment which angered Republicans.
Patel fired Deputy Assistant Director Emily Morales last week, MS NOW reported, citing four people familiar with the matter. Morales had a role in the FBI’s determination that the shooting during House Republicans’ baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, was not domestic terrorism, but “suicide by cop.”
Morales’ firing, sources told the outlet, was perceived by many in the FBI as another example of Patel terminating agents who ran afoul of Donald Trump or Republicans. He and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche have bragged about letting go agents involved in any of the investigations into Trump. Some have sued, claiming political retaliation.
The firing also comes five months after MS NOW reported on the removal of Tonya Ugoretz, the Intelligence Directorate assistant director who helped withdraw a flimsy intelligence report about alleged Chinese attempts to interfere in the 2020 election with fake driver’s licenses.
In the letter Patel wrote to Morales, it wasn’t clear if he cited the FBI’s assessment of the shooting.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on personnel matters to the Daily Beast.
Scalise, the 60-year-old Louisiana congressman, was not the only person shot during the baseball practice nine years ago. A Capitol Police officer assigned to Scalise, a former legislative assistant, and a legislative aide were also shot. The perpetrator, James Hodgkinson, was shot by police and died at a nearby hospital.
Hodgkinson frequently expressed anti-Trump and anti-Republican views on social media and in letters to the editor. During the shooting, he was carrying a list of Republicans’ names in his pocket, authorities said.
Initially, the FBI did not call Hodgkinson a domestic terrorist. But in 2021, then-Director Christopher Wray told Congress that the definition of a domestic terrorist had changed, and that Hodgkinson’s actions fell under that criteria.
“The shooter was motivated by a desire to commit an attack on Members of Congress… This conduct is something that we would today characterize as a domestic terrorism event," Wray said in a report to the House Appropriations Committee.
Republicans, in a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report last May, said that that determination should have been made at the time.
“The FBI case file makes clear this case was a premeditated assassination attempt on Republican congressmen by a radical, left-wing political extremist, who was seeking to affect the conduct of our government,” the report said.
