The FBI director, Kash Patel, announced on Monday he was launching a criminal investigation into group chats used by Minneapolis protesters on the Signal messaging app, based on a social media post by the far-right personality Cam Higby.
Patel used the podcast of another rightwing personality, Benny Johnson, to break the news.
Higby had posted on Sunday on X that he had “infiltrated” a group chat on Signal, the widely used communication app that offers effective encryption, populated by anti-ICE organizers in Minneapolis. Higby’s posts appear to show communication between Minneapolis activists in vehicles trying to locate and share the descriptions and license plates of potential ICE vehicles. He argued that the chats have “the sole intention of tracking down federal agents and impeding/assaulting/and obstructing them”.
Higby pushed his disclosures on Johnson’s podcast, The Benny Show, where Johnson demanded a federal investigation.
“This is clearly a coordinated infrastructure,” Johnson said, “and we’d like for the feds to take a crack at trying to get rid of this infrastructure the way they approach the mob or cartels or other terrorist networks, right?”
Patel himself then joined Johnson’s podcast – where he made frequent appearances before becoming FBI director – and confirmed that he would act as suggested.
“As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it,” Patel said.
“We immediately opened up that investigation, because that sort of Signal chat – being coordinated with individuals not just locally in Minnesota, but maybe even around the country – if that leads to a break in the federal statute or a violation of some law, then we are going to arrest people.”
Patel was careful to say he was not investigating peaceful protests or first amendment activity, but added: “You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm’s way.”
Kevin Goldberg, vice-president at the Freedom Forum, told the Guardian that impeding or obstructing law enforcement would be illegal, but that when he reviewed the Higby posts he saw nothing obviously illegal.
“I got the sense the [Signal chat] group has been organized for purposes that are fully protected by the first amendment: to observe, to speak and to alert others of possible dangers. I didn’t see anything that impedes or obstructs justice. The claimed ‘doxing’ of law enforcement is not necessary illegal.”
Goldberg said the supreme court in 1958 established the right to organize even in secret as long as there is no illegal activity. “I would want to know what the illegal activity is in this case,” he said.
Patrick Eddington, of the libertarian Cato institute, said the FBI had no business investigating. “The use of encryption is as American as apple pie. The founders used it before during and after the revolution,” he said.
“The notion that Kash Patel, who clearly failed to investigate the criminal conduct of Pete Hegseth now want to go after people for utilizing first amendment protected activity and technology to warn their neighbors about violent out-of-control so-called federal agents policing their neighborhoods is beyond outrageous.”
The FBI’s quick move to investigate activists based on a far-right provocateur’s media posts comes at the same time the bureau has insisted it is not investigating the killing of Alex Pretti, the veterans affairs nurse shot repeatedly by border patrol agents on Saturday in Minneapolis.
That investigation is being run by homeland security investigations, HSI, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, according to an interview Patel gave Fox News, and a sworn statement by an HSI official in court.
NBC News reported on Monday that investigators were reviewing body-camera video from the cameras worn by the agents involved in the incident, which could provide more important footage of the killing, which was already widely captured on cellphone cameras from multiple angles.
