On Monday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe sent out co-host and Atlantic writer Jonathan Lemire to squirm and awkwardly reject comments made without evidence on Friday by MSNBC and NBC News law enforcement analyst Frank Figliuzzi that FBI Director Kash Patel was spending “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building.”
Lemire bizarrely pivoted to this in the fourth hour even after co-host Mika Brzezinski had done a tease for the next segment ahead of a commercial break: “And now let’s circle back to a segment from Friday’s show. Frank Figliuzzi was on that morning during this hour, discussing the work of administration officials. At the end of that segment, Figliuzzi said that FBI director Kash Patel has reportedly been more visible at nightclubs than at his office at FBI headquarters.”
“This was a misstatement,” he conceded, adding “we have not verified that claim.”
Rewinding to Friday, Lemire himself was culpable with this heavy-handed cue to Figliuzzi:
So, Frank, let’s turn to FBI Director Kash Patel, who has sort of taken a surprisingly backseat role, at least to this point in the first 102 or three days, wherever we are right now, what do you make of that? That he’s just been a little less visible than I think a lot of people Trump observers expected he would be.
The former Deep State operative then declared “reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building and there are reports that daily briefings to him have been changed from every day to maybe twice weekly” and thus “both a blessing and a curse” for the FBI.
“[W]ithout any experience level, things could be bad. If he’s not plugged in, things could be bad, but he’s allowing agents to run things. So, we don’t know where this is going. But the one word that keeps coming back at me from inside that building is chaos. People don’t know what’s happening from day-to-day,” he concluded.
Lemire did nothing to rebut it. Instead, he gave it credence by citing “reporting, I believe, from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, that Patel spent a lot of his time at his home in Las Vegas” and thus “working remotely[.]”
One could wonder if this was MSNBC’s way of being sued into oblivion like CNN was.
Also during the Friday segment, Figliuzzi threw a brief fit over the FBI reassigning agents who knelt with the Black Lives Matter mobs in 2020. By doing so, he argued, the FBI was showing such de-escalating tactics are “a sign of weakness.”
“They don’t like de-escalation. They like confrontation,” he claimed without evidence.
Figliuzzi’s entire career on MSNBC and NBC have been filled with whoppers. Following the second Trump assassination attempt, he called for a mass gun grab and, after the first, he speculated without evidence anti-Trump protesters were now targets of revenge attacks.
In April 2023, he called for Fox News to face “financial pain” for not supporting gun control. This came a month after the Nashville Christian school shooting when he blamed the attack — which was carried out by a transgender ex-student — on “monsters” with an “enthusiasm” for gun.
But the biggest Figliuzzi howlers have to be multiple instances when he deemed conservative parents at school board meetings to be domestic terrorists, said conservatives are a bigger threat to America than al-Qaeda, and saw a nod by President Trump to neo-Nazis in raising flags from half-staff on August 8, 2019 in memory of the shooting victims in Dayton and El Paso.
To see the relevant MSNBC transcripts from May 2 and 5, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
May 2, 2025
9:37 a.m. EasternKATTY KAY: Frank, can we just talk about another story from the FBI this week and that we that several agents who had been previously commended for defusing a Black Lives Matter protest by taking a knee were reassigned this week. Tell us about them.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI: Yeah, indeed. So, we’re talking about an incident that happened four to five years ago following the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protest, where agents were assigned in something they don’t typically do, which is to protect monuments in Washington, D.C. during protests. They claimed that they took a knee to de-escalate what could have been a violent confrontation with protesters, showing some solidarity there and now, years later, it’s apparent that the top of the FBI doesn’t like what they did. They don’t like de-escalation. They like confrontation. They see it as a sign of weakness — what those agents did. By the way, the Agents Association back then gave them a commendation for de-escalating that incident. So, we’re in a new world now where there’s retribution for de-escalating something and I want to remind people the FBI is the primary civil rights organization to — to enforce civil rights, like excessive use of force by the police. So, when the FBI is supposed to confront protesters who are protesting excessive use of force. There’s an issue there. The FBI needs to reach out to that community.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: So, Frank, let’s turn to FBI Director Kash Patel, who has sort of taken a surprisingly backseat role, at least to this point in the first 102 or three days, wherever we are right now, what do you make of that? That he’s just been a little less visible than I think a lot of people Trump observers expected he would be.
FIGLIUZZI: Yeah. Well, reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building and there are reports that daily briefings to him have been changed from every day to maybe twice weekly. So, this is both a blessing and a curse because if you if he’s really trying to run things without his experience — without any experience level, things could be bad. If he’s not plugged in, things could be bad, but he’s allowing agents to run things. So, we don’t know where this is going. But the one word that keeps coming back at me from inside that building is chaos. People don’t know what’s happening from day-to-day.
LEMIRE: There’s also been reporting, I believe, from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, that Patel spent a lot of his time at his home in Las Vegas. He’s been sort of working remotely for at least part of the week.
(….)
May 5, 2025
9:31 a.m. EasternJONATHAN LEMIRE: And now let’s circle back to a segment from Friday’s show. Frank Figliuzzi was on that morning during this hour, discussing the work of administration officials. At the end of that segment, Figliuzzi said that FBI director Kash Patel has reportedly been more visible at nightclubs than at his office at FBI headquarters. This was a misstatement. We have not verified that claim.
