FBI Director Kash Patel promised transparency and accountability following revelations that the bureau, under the Biden administration, spied on several Republican senators in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol protests.
Patel's post to X on Tuesday came a day after Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed FBI agents conducted toll record analysis — a form of communications metadata review — on several GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
Patel called it "baseless monitoring."
"Transparency is important and accountability is critical. We promised both, and this is what promises kept looks like. This FBI is delivering," Patel said in the post. "We terminated employees, we abolished the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead."
CR-15 was the FBI's Washington Field Office squad focused on investigating federal public corruption, including work supporting the "Arctic Frost" probe that fed into special counsel Jack Smith's Trump investigations.
In May 2025, the FBI quietly disbanded CR-15 and reassigned its agents, as part of a broader reorganization and shift in priorities. Supporters of the disbanding cite past concerns of partisan bias in CR-15's operations.
The FBI in 2023 analyzed phone records of more than a half dozen Republican lawmakers as part of an investigation into what investigators described as efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election, according to information released Monday by GOP senators.
The records enabled investigators to see basic information about the date and time of the calls but not the content of the communications, the senators said.
"Biden FBI weaponization equals worse than Watergate," Grassley said Monday.
The document suggests the analysis was conducted by an FBI special agent whose name was redacted and that it was authorized by two supervisory agents. It does not say how or why those lawmakers were identified or whether any meaningful tips or leads emerged from that investigative work.
"We promised you transparency and accountability. We will continue to deliver on those promises. You deserve better," FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a post to X early Tuesday.
Newsmax wires contributed to this report.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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