Kash Patel’s surprising appointment of a top J6 inquisitor to head DC FBI office

The surprise appointment of a hard-line critic of Jan. 6 protesters to lead the FBI’s Washington Field Office has set the conservative political world ablaze and put new FBI Director Kash Patel in the line of fire from a vocal group of President Donald J. Trump supporters.

News first broke April 4 in the New York Times that Steven J. Jensen was named assistant director in charge of the most powerful of the FBI’s 56 field offices. Conservative critics and pundits who were expecting to see the FBI gutted and reformed under President Trump took the news of Jensen’s appointment hard.

Jensen ‘built the construct for the January 6 witch hunt.’

After the Times published an article about Jensen’s appointment, the Gateway Pundit called it “fake news.” On April 6, Blaze News confirmed Jensen’s appointment to the key FBI job. Debate raged on social media on whether Jensen’s appointment was real and why the FBI had not made a formal announcement of the promotion. Such major appointments are typically announced via a news release.

“He was a key figure in this domestic terror push against January Sixers, according to testimony before the House,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “He treated them all as terrorists and was one of the key instigators in pushing the narrative within the bureaucracy that these folks needed to be jailed and ferreted out.”

The FBI’s National Press Office declined to comment on Jensen’s appointment and referred Blaze News to the homepage for the Washington Field Office, where Jensen is now listed as the assistant director in charge.

Jensen was associated with some of the worst rights abuses at the FBI, according to Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project.

“Steve Jensen should not have a job at the FBI,” Howell told Blaze News. “He was on the bleeding edge of some of the worst abuses at the FBI. The coordinated pushback on those calling him out is unfortunate, but it’s already had to backtrack on key points.

“For instance, first it was that Jensen was not promoted,” Howell said. “That turned out to be unequivocally false. Now we’re at the stage of people pretending it’s a good thing that he was promoted.”

George Hill, retired FBI national security intelligence supervisor, called Jensen the “Tomás de Torquemada of the J6 round-up of ‘domestic terrorists.’” Torquemada was the first grand inquisitor of Spain in the 15th century.

In testimony before Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Hill said he took part in regular phone conferences led by Jensen and former FBI Assistant Director Steven D’Antuono.

New FBI Director Kash Patel.
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“So you know, this is a conversation that took place almost two years ago,” Hill said in a private transcribed interview. “But the Philadelphia office said, ‘Well, there’s no evidence of any kind of, you know, violent leanings or insurrectionist leanings,’ to which Steve Jensen said, ‘You know, I don’t give a blank, they’re godd***ed terrorists and we’re going to round them all up.’”

Hill said as chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section at FBI headquarters, Jensen hosted regular conference calls that began two days after the Jan. 6 protests.

“This conference call, everybody could dial into it,” Hill said on the April 7 episode of “The Kyle Seraphin Show.” “So this is going into all the fusion centers where you have chiefs of police dialing in. You have members of the state police usually up to the rank of colonel participating, and all these people have direct access to people on the governors’ staff, the mayors’ staff.

“So this information, this narrative of how our country almost fell, was going into the executive mansions of every state in the country and every mayor’s residence throughout the country on a twice-daily basis,” Hill said.

Jensen “built the construct for the January 6 witch hunt,” Hill said. “After January 6, he had a ready-made buffet of never-ending domestic terrorists to go after, and he went at them very aggressively.”

‘It’s absolutely indefensible.’

Hill was the subject of blowback on X over his testimony, which he said was never called into question prior to news about Jensen surfacing on April 4.

“That my name is about to get dragged is a diversion from the facts that are already in evidence that are unassailable, that Steven Jensen was the organizer of the entire J6 roundup, from the identification of subjects through the prosecution,” Hill said.

Text of an email circulated on X April 6 by Blaze News confirmed the appointment of Jensen as head of the Washington Field Office. The March 28 email said Jensen would assume the role on March 31.

“While this came rather unexpectedly as I recently was asked to serve as the acting Operations Director for the National Security Branch, I firmly believe in the philosophy of servant leadership and service over self,” Jensen wrote in a statement released by Phillip Bates, acting assistant director in charge of the Mission Support Division at WFO. “They are the driving forces of who I am and how I lead, and I am renewing my commitment to these principles as I transition into this new leadership role at WFO.”

Jensen has been with the FBI for 19 years, most recently as special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Columbia, S.C. He was chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Section at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., from April 2020 through October 2021 and had a key role in the investigation of the Jan. 6 protests at the U.S. Capitol.

The news of Jensen’s elevation to run the Washington Field Office thundered across conservative social media.

“I’m going to call out any fraud who tries to suck up to Kash by defending the Steve Jensen promotion,” former Jan. 6 defendant William Pope wrote on X. “The man hunted down J6ers, destroyed American families, and labeled us terrorists. It’s absolutely indefensible.”

Pope added: “Jensen gets the gold mine. J6ers get the shaft,” and said, “You can’t drain the swamp by promoting the swamp.”

Members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation SWAT team patrol the Longworth House Office Building on Jan. 6, 2021.Photo by Erin Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Howell said that U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the powerful House Committee on the Judiciary, was behind the pressure to name Jensen to the FBI post. Jordan denied the assertion through an unnamed spokesman, according to journalist Breanna Morello.

Former FBI Special Agent Steve Friend, who was suspended without pay after raising concerns about the level of FBI force used to round up even misdemeanor Jan. 6 suspects, called Jensen’s appointment “disappointing.”

“Steven Jensen exposed himself as partisan when he weaponized the FBI to persecute Americans over January 6,” Friend told Blaze News.

Former Jan. 6 defendant Jennifer Heinl protested Jensen’s promotion, recounting how the FBI “completely destroyed my life.”

“I’m one of the so-called terrorists that he didn’t give a damn about,” she wrote on X. “A mom from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with no criminal background who was let in the open doors on the Senate side by Capitol officers. For 45 minutes, I walked around calling family members to let them know I was OK. Yeah, I was such a danger that you waited months to come get me and then after that completely destroyed my life.”

Fitton said he’s troubled at the lack of discussion so far about reforming the FBI and Department of Justice.

“For all I know, he’s a good guy and we’re all misinterpreting it,” Fitton said, “but what I am not seeing out of the FBI yet and what I’m not seeing out of the Justice Department yet is a radical remaking or even talking about it that we’ve seen with USAID, that we’ve seen with the Department of Education. There’s nothing the FBI is doing that another federal agency or local or state law enforcement can’t do.”

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, apparently responding to growing impatience for change but without directly referencing the controversy, asked for continued forbearance as the process unfolds.

“When you see something happen, and the entire story isn’t public, and the underlying facts aren’t all public, it may appear counterintuitive to our reform agenda. I promise you, it’s not an accident,” he posted to X on Sunday evening.

“I realize asking you to ‘trust me’ is a waste of time. Watch what happens, continue to demand results, be cautious of narrative ‘traps,’ let time put the puzzle pieces together, and what we’re doing will make sense. I see and hear you and your feedback.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include a statement from FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.

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