More from his statement:
"...I disagree with the policy views he articulated on any number of issues. But policy disagreements are legitimate. And inflated arrest statistics and overblown claims of crime reductions are—however distasteful in a supposedly apolitical FBI director—the stuff of normal politics.
Flagrantly misleading a congressional committee about one’s basic management of the agency one heads, by contrast, is something very different.
Why exactly Patel thinks he can get away with this I’m not quite sure. As he noted several times, a bunch of the personnel matters he was asked about are issues in current litigation, and that litigation will produce discovery, in which Patel or others will have to testify and opposing litigants will get access to documents. It will also produce court opinions. And when judges confront the question of whose account of these firings is accurate, I venture the guess that Patel’s account will not fare well.
While simpering Republicans keen to overlook everything may not care when the director is revealed to be a liar, Democratic senators and representatives certainly will care—and Patel is likely to have to be FBI director under Democratic leadership of one house of Congress or another at some point.
Federal judges will care too, and FBI agents have to testify in federal courts literally every day.
Most importantly, rank and file FBI agents will care; each and every one of them knows that they are useless to the bureau the moment they show what the bureau calls a “lack of candor” in an official context.
Each and every one of them knows that they would be fired if they responded to official questions as Patel did.
There’s one other thing Patel needs to reckon with: There are a lot of people—like myself—who don’t just not believe him. They know whether he’s lying. There are people in the bureau. There are people outside the bureau...."
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