A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The director of the FBI is describing a plot to attack Sunday's UFC event at the White House. Kash Patel first said on social media Tuesday that agents had foiled a plan and arrested multiple people. One suspect allegedly said the group intended to detonate drones over the crowd, and then shoot people as they fled. A Secret Service official said that it was a serious threat and other suspects were still at large. Then Vice President JD Vance downplayed the threat on Fox News.
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JD VANCE: I found out about this, like the president, for the first time this morning. And it turns out the plot was, like, not that advanced. They weren't...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yeah.
VANCE: ...In town. They had not really done that much planning.
MARTÍNEZ: Joining us to discuss this is former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem, who writes the Substack newsletter Early Warning. So, Juliette, when you think about what the FBI alleges and then how Vice President Vance talked about it, I mean, how would you assess the threat?
JULIETTE KAYYEM: Well, what we know is that at least five men have been arrested, and this was from California, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio. And they appear to have been on a Signal chat discussing these sort of grandiose plans for a massive terror attack. They did not appear to have the capacity, did not appear to be imminent. And one of the mothers - this was not something the FBI found out. One of the mothers had come forward and said her son was acting in a weird way and was threatening to do something and had sort of hooked up with some other guys on Signal to plan something nefarious.
So there was thoughts of it. There was discussion of it amongst this group, but there was absolutely no imminency. And we know that because, for example, the president and the vice president were not told about it. And generally, if there is a real terrorist threat or terrorist attack attempt against where they are, they would've been notified, and there would've been changes to the security protocol for the UFC event.
MARTÍNEZ: So what do you think accounts for the disconnect, seemingly, between what the Secret Service is saying and what their bosses are saying?
KAYYEM: I know. We're both laughing 'cause it's like, the first time you might just blame it on the fact that Kash Patel, you know, really didn't have any experience to be the director of the FBI, but we're a year and a half into this administration. This is probably the sixth or seventh time that Kash Patel aggressively - sometimes erroneously and often prematurely, as he did in this case - tweets out an ongoing investigation. At best, these are just silly, and he looks sort of immature and unable to control his emotions. But at worst, and we see that in this case, the information can disrupt an ongoing investigation.
Look, the Secret Service has two roles. One is the one that we tend to know, which is they protect our VIPs, protect the constitutional order and the president and the vice president. A second role they have is investigations of these threats, and it does appear that there was an ongoing investigation 'cause there were other people on this Signal chat. We want to identify who they are and determine that they weren't a threat to the president or anyone else. I don't understand why it's still happening, except his desire to sort of promote what the FBI is doing. And I'll be honest with you. I've never seen the Secret Service, essentially in their press conference, say the FBI was wrong to do this. They said it in code, but anyone listening understood that they were not happy.
MARTÍNEZ: Wow. Juliette Kayyem leads the Homeland Security Project at Harvard University. Juliette, as always, thank you very much.
KAYYEM: Thank you so much.
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