FBI Director Kash Patel directly addressed the newly filed bribery charges against a former aide to Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul, stemming from an alleged scheme involving Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) contracts.
“While Americans were locked down and desperate for PPE, Linda Sun and Chris Hu cashed in – allegedly lining their pockets while serving CCP interests,” Patel wrote on X. “This is corruption that endangered lives. The FBI will not tolerate public officials who sell out their country.” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino responded to Patel’s post, writing, “Read the last sentence again. Bookmark it.” Sun and her husband, Chris Hu, were both indicted on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the FBI is also looking into who may have leaked a sensitive Defense Intelligence Agency assessment to the media last week following the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons sites. The assessment was likely leaked to take the wind out of President Donald Trump’s sails because it said that the attacks likely only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months. However, it also said the intelligence that went into the assessement was of “low confidence,” a detail the media outlets did not report.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in a follow-on press conference to discuss the strikes that the FBI was on the case, intimating that there would likely be charges if a leaker is found. At the same time, GOP lawmakers are also keen to find the leaker, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who suggested that the leak could have come from a Democratic member of Congress, as Trump said earlier in the week.
“Right now, they are looking for a leaker. So does Congress — how does this work? Now they are looking at Congress. I thought at first it was a Pentagon guy, but now they are saying it could have been a member of Congress. Do they go into a computer and access it, like, how does this work?” Fox News host Jesse Watters said to Graham during a Thursday interview.
“You get the report. You get the initial assessment, members of Congress do on certain committees. We can rule me out as a leaker,” Graham responded. “We get information—certain committees do—about the initial Defense Intelligence Agency assessment. Somebody leaked that assessment to suggest that the operation was not what Trump said it was,” the senator continued.
“They have a political motivation. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this out. It is somebody who wants to undercut Trump. Is that a member of Congress? Could be. I don’t care what your title is. If you leaked classified information, you should go to jail,” he said.