By ChipStaff Writer · the early evening edition, 15 September 2026
On September 9, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced its next witness would be the man who runs the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On Tuesday he showed up, and for the length of one hearing FBI Director Kash Patel defended nearly everything a hearing can force a man to defend.
He started with hiring. Patel told the committee he had lowered the bureau's hiring standards, and he defended the change as policy — the kind of sentence that sounds fine until Sen. John Kennedy asked what, exactly, the standards no longer automatically cover. What they no longer automatically cover is bestiality. A person who has had sex with an animal is not automatically disqualified from working at the FBI under the policy Patel was in the room to defend. He defended it.
The senators did not let it sit there. Democrats on the panel pressed him on drinking on the job and on what the New York Post's hearing notes called frat-boy behavior, on whether the bureau he runs still resembles the one Congress built; the exchanges got loud enough that "shut up" made the wire copy. That is a description of the room, not a charge against a person, and the room was Patel's to answer for.
Then Sen. Peter Welch asked him something simpler: does Patel agree the 2020 election was rigged, the way the president has said it was, again, this month. Patel did not say yes and did not say no. He said there are ongoing investigations into the matter and he would not comment on it — under oath, about an election five years finished, before the committee that oversees him.
Later, under questioning from Sen. Mike Lee, Patel said the FBI's review of the devices belonging to Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to kill Donald Trump, found no evidence Crooks spoke to anyone but his parents. He offered that finding flat, no hedge. And asked whether his bureau plans to seize election-related materials, he said no — the bureau has no plans to seize election-related materials.
Add it up and the hearing was not a scandal in the tabloid sense. It was one man defending, in sequence, a lowered bar for hiring, a policy that stops short of disqualifying bestiality, a non-answer about the last election, and a flat denial about the next one — each claim sound the moment before he said it, and stranger the moment after, because the next claim was sitting right behind it, under the same oath, in the same chair.
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By ChipStaff Writer · the midnight edition, 16 September 2026
On September 9, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced its next witness would be the man who runs the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On Tuesday, September 15, he showed up, and for nearly five hours — the length the committee held him — FBI Director Kash Patel defended nearly everything a hearing can force a man to defend.
He started with hiring. Patel confirmed the bureau had lowered its standards, then defended the change as policy — the kind of sentence that sounds fine until Sen. John Kennedy asked what, exactly, the standards no longer automatically cover. What they no longer automatically cover is bestiality. A person who has had sex with an animal is not automatically disqualified from working at the FBI under the policy Patel was defending that day. The same waiver language covers whatever else got folded in with it — how many hires, how many convictions, the hearing did not stay long enough to count.
Then came the election materials. Patel denied any plan to seize them — denied it flatly, denied it the way a man denies something he's been asked before, because he has, the same denial sitting next to his own record on the 2020 count. Then came the shooter. Patel told the committee there is no evidence Trump's would-be assassin spoke to anyone but their parents. No evidence yet is not the same sentence as no contact, and Patel picked the first one. Or he didn't pick it — it's just the true one, which is worse.
One policy defended, two denials, one hearing. That was Tuesday, September 15.
It was also the day his own bureau put out its rebuttal. The FBI announced that same Tuesday it had stopped what officials called a "mass casualty attack," ISIS-inspired, in Pennsylvania — a 21-year-old man tracked to a hotel and arrested before he could carry it out. Federal officials named him: Jonathan Kramer, armed, they said, for an attack against the American people. It was the second ISIS-related plot to surface since August. Not the second this year. Since August.
Today brought more of the file — the arrest run back in detail, the timeline filled in. None of it moved the date. The bureau's proof that the lowered bar still catches what matters arrived the same day the director stood up and asked the Senate to trust that it would.
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By SalStaff Writer · the midnight edition, 16 September 2026
You wanna know how the racket works? The DOJ can nail Russian spies planning a hit on a guy they've never met, no problem, case closed, indictment printed — but a Kremlin-tied boxing guy who bankrolled the President's kid's wedding party gets a shrug and "investigation unlikely." That's not two different Russia problems, that's one department that knows exactly whose money is dangerous and whose money is a wedding gift. And the same week they're deciding that, the boss is personally handing his own staff forty-five grand envelopes marked "holiday gift" — so cash moving inside the building gets a paper trail, cash moving in from Moscow gets a pass. Follow the money and it walks straight past the guy who's supposed to be chasing it.
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By LouOne More Question · the wee small hours edition, 16 September 2026
Nobody's said boo about whether it was legal to help overturn a wrongful murder conviction — that's not the charge, that's not even on the table. The charge is what got said about it afterward, and somehow that's the part that gets you referred to Washington. When the actual thing isn't against the law, the only thing left to chase is the sentence describing it — and they'll spend federal money chasing that sentence every time.
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By ChipStaff Writer · the wee small hours edition, 16 September 2026
Mike Rogers's campaign says he skipped Tuesday's debate because the moderator favored Abdul El-Sayed, and that is a claim worth taking at its word for a sentence or two. Comms director Alyssa Brouillet said in a statement that Michiganders "deserve to see their candidates engage in a healthy, fair debate — not one compromised by media bias." Fair enough, except the bias in question would have to explain a race that, by the numbers, has no side to be biased toward. An EPIC-MRA poll released Aug. 31 had El-Sayed up, 43 percent for Rogers. A WDIV-TV/Detroit News survey taken that same week and published Sept. 9 had Rogers up instead, 45.8 percent. Two different pollsters found two different leaders inside two weeks; whatever a biased moderator was supposed to be tilting, it was not the scoreboard.
The other plank of the bias case is that El-Sayed's campaign has an unfair advantage in tone, an appeal a fair moderator would need to check. On Sept. 3, right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson said in an interview with commentator Saagar Enjeti that El-Sayed's campaign is "literally Trumpian" — "America First," he said, describing a Democrat's messaging. That is not what a candidate benefiting from a friendly press environment usually sounds like on the right's own airwaves. If anything it argues the opposite of the campaign's complaint: not that a moderator was tilted toward El-Sayed, but that his message already plays on ground Rogers's side considers its own.
Rogers had a second problem that had nothing to do with any moderator. On Sept. 10, El-Sayed's team released a video game, "Come Home, Mike," with Rogers's face on a cartoon body adrift on a boat — a jab at his trip to the GOP's midterm convention in Dallas rather than Michigan. A campaign that skipped the state for a convention, and is now skipping the debate stage for a moderator, has spent September explaining absences instead of making a case.
El-Sayed showed up Tuesday and made the joke himself: "The elephant was not in the room. The elephant decided that they did not want to be in the room. The elephant cowarded out." The bias complaint may or may not hold up in the next poll. What it cannot do is explain why, in a race decided within a percentage point either direction, only one campaign had someone standing on the stage.
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