Adam Fitzgerald

2:25 marathoner. Runner. Fan and student of all things running.

[Ken Dilanian @KDilanianMSNOW]

News: Secret Service officials are furious that FBI Director Kash Patel prematurely announced on Tuesday morning the details of a sealed and ongoing criminal investigation into a plot to attack the UFC fight event this weekend with drones, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Secret Service and FBI agents had been partnered on the investigation into a group of individuals discussing plans for a drone attack at the White House in the last week, and had discussed unsealing the case and making an announcement later that day. The problem with Patel’s social media announcement, the sources say, was the case had been sealed in court and roughly ten suspects had not yet been arrested and placed in custody at the time Patel made his public social media post.

Secret Service and FBI officials had discussed seeking to make more arrests, unseal the case by late Tuesday afternoon and make a joint public statement, and were surprised by Patel “jumping the gun.”

“We all woke up this morning to see this on Twitter,” said one administration official, who like others, asked to speak confidentially to discuss sensitive matters.

The threat to the UFC event became known to the Secret Service and FBI in the last week when a relative of one of the suspects contacted local police in the Cincinnati area, according to two people briefed on the probe, and reporting that their relative was talking about engaging in some vague plot in DC.

An advanced threat interdiction team at the Secret Service, with the help of the FBI, began seeking a subpoena for an encrypted Signal chat thread and then were able to identify the plot being planned and some of the people discussing using drones and possible snipers to attack the UFC fight event at the White House’s South lawn.

Authorities then arrested one suspect on June 13 and moved immediately to seal the case so the FBI and Secret Service could continue investigating and identifying and arresting additional suspects. The Secret Service also dramatically increased its plans for security around the event as a precaution, and put out an alert to its law enforcement partners to be on the lookout for people with drones in downtown Washington and other identifying information.

Matt Quinn, the Secret Service’s deputy director, called out Patel’s premature announcement in a Tuesday news conference but did not use his name and said the Secret Service made a conscious decision not to reveal the existence of the probe prematurely.

“I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s `Don’t choke on your own smoke,” he said. “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”

He said he was choosing not to discuss extensive details of the case because it remained sealed and ongoing.

With @CarolLeonnig @MarcSantiaNews @lawofruby

[Ben Rhodes @brhodes]

@TVietor08 The kind of deal that you get when you win a war.

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

Trump surrendered to Iran, and now you're going to pay to rebuild them.

Had enough yet?

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

We spent over $70B bombing them.
We will spend $300B to rebuild them.
We lost this war, and now we will be funding Iran.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

Who knows if there will be a final agreement. But if there is, two things will be true at the same time:

a) It's essentially surrender to Iran.

b) We should be glad about it, because every day this insane, illegal war continues, we get weaker.

1/ Let me explain.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

“Trump Parties While America Surrenders” https://t.co/R0xS5c7PPe

[Hemant Mehta @hemantmehta]

This is who Republicans are, up and down the ballot.

It’s what you support if you vote for them at any level.

[Christo Grozev @christogrozev]

Incredible. Publishing what appears to be (if you care to read the "evidence") a totally legitimate US program, and even citing the risks of these being used as "Russian information campaigns", Tulsi Gabbard - the gift that kept giving - presents the Kremlin with yet one more information operation.
Read our investigation from 2025 where we presented evidence that the hybrid ops unit of GRU's 29155 came up with the whole "bio-labs" concept - and co-opted Tulsi into it. https://t.co/D8qdE38ahv

[Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen]

The 10 hours of erecting scaffolding wasn’t to strip the letters (something that 30 minutes in a boom lift could accomplish), it was to conceal the view with a curtain because Trump couldn’t handle the optics of the letters of his name being plucked off the building.

[Warren Gunnels @GunnelsWarren]

If Bernie's 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires had been enacted in 2012, Elon Musk would be worth less than $365 billion instead of the $1.2 trillion that he's worth today.

Elon would still be the wealthiest man alive & every family in America would have universal childcare.

[. @GregTSargent]

Remember when certain intellectuals told us that Trumpism represented a fundamental break with Paul Ryanesque makers-vs-takers plutocratic orthodoxy?

[Jon Favreau @jonfavs]

Elon Musk held up a chainsaw, fed USAID into the wood chipper, and at least 600,00 people have already died as a result - two-thirds of them children.

History's first trillionaire.

[Team Talarico @TeamTalaricoHQ]

.@JamesTalarico: There's been a lot of talk in this race about what it means to be a real man.

Recently on the campaign trail I told the story of my adoptive dad, Mark Talarico. Every Saturday morning, he would mow our lawn, and then without anyone asking him to, he would go next door and mow our neighbor's lawn because she was a widow. My dad never talked about it — he just did it, because that's what a man does.

A man takes responsibility, upholds his commitments to his family and his neighbors, and does what's right, even when no one is watching.

Here's what real men don't do. They don't lie and cheat their way through life, sell their soul to the highest bidder, or steal from other people in order to enrich themselves. Real men serve others. Weak men serve themselves.

I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man, and I don't think Ken Paxton or Ted Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Incredible. Scotland puts a wind turbine near Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen 20 years ago. He sues and loses. Then his resulting hatred of wind turbines now ends up with the US Secretaries of Defense & Interior fabricating absurd lies to justify killing wind energy in the US.

[Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) @speechboy71]

I know we’re all inured to this but it’s still remarkable that the president of the United States lies on a daily basis about the last three presidential elections — and all because he has the world’s most fragile ego and can’t admit he lost

[Acyn @Acyn]

Talarico: Ken Paxton's own party impeached him. His own staff reported him to the FBI, and now his own defense attorney is endorsing our campaign. Those closest to Ken Paxton know that he's unfit for office. 

Since taking office, Ken Paxton has become a multimillionaire while our pay has remained stagnant. He now owns 11 homes while most Texans can't afford one.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Talarico: Here's what real men don't do. They don't lie and cheat their way through life. They don't sell their soul to the highest bidder. Real men serve others, weak men serve themselves. So I welcome this debate. I don't think Paxton or Cruz are in a position to tell anyone what a real man is.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Hard to believe Trump would lie about cancer.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Hayes: Now, would it surprise you to learn that is not true? A senior Iranian official tells MSNOW Iran has not agreed to anything. State media reported the same thing. But oil prices fell and stocks rose on trump's guarantees. That's pretty much exactly what happened the nearly 40 previous times Donald Trump promised a peace deal was this close.

[Fred Wellman @FPWellman]

That’s not a thing.