FBI Director Can’t Name One of America’s Worst Mass Murderers

Gasps filled the hearing room Wednesday when FBI Director Kash Patel admitted he couldn’t immediately recall the name of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who slaughtered nine Black worshippers in Charleston just ten years ago.

The exchange came during Patel’s second day of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, where Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) pressed him on far-right extremism.

“Dylann Roof, who followed white supremacist propaganda, murdered nine Black parishioners in Charleston in 2015. Do you deny this?” she asked.

Patel’s response stunned the chamber. “I’m sorry, Dylann Roof? Can you give me some more information?”

“You’re the head of the FBI,” Kamlager-Dove shot back. “If you don’t know, that’s fine.”

Within minutes, the moment was ricocheting across social media. Kamlager-Dove posted the clip with a blistering caption: “It’s incredibly shameful and concerning that Kash Patel doesn’t know about one of the most heinous hate crimes against Black Americans in the last decade.”

Civil rights leaders erupted. “Every Black family in America remembers Charleston,” attorney Ben Crump said. “If the FBI director under Trump doesn’t, it shows this administration’s priorities: ignore white supremacy, attack the left.”

Historian Ibram X. Kendi was equally blunt: “The Charleston massacre is not some trivia question. It’s a national trauma. Forgetting it is a political statement.”

On June 17, 2015, Roof opened fire inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, murdering nine Black parishioners during Bible study. Survivors described the horror in wrenching detail. “I watched my son take his last breath,” survivor Felicia Sanders testified at Roof’s trial.

Roof was convicted on federal hate crime charges and sentenced to death in 2017 — the first such sentence in U.S. history. His name became synonymous with the country’s deadly legacy of racism and violence.

The fact that the man leading the FBI in 2025 couldn’t summon that memory left Democrats aghast.

Patel’s lapse also underscored the growing tension around Trump’s rhetoric after the recent assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. On Fox & Friends, Trump claimed radicals on the right were only “radical because they don’t want to see crime,” while blaming the left as “the problem.”

Pressed by Kamlager-Dove, Patel dodged. “I don’t speak for the president,” he said, before insisting Trump had acknowledged violence “on both sides.” That’s not what Trump said.

For Democrats, the misstep revealed an FBI leadership more eager to spin Trump’s words than confront the rise of violent white nationalism.

Though Patel confirmed he remembered the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, he seemed to downplay Charleston, calling it “the other thing” and asking for “a little information.”

To many, that phrase alone was chilling. “The other thing? Nine Black churchgoers gunned down isn’t just an ‘other thing,’” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) posted. “This is a disgrace.”

Patel’s stumble may follow him for months. It has already become a rallying cry for Democrats who say Trump’s FBI is turning a blind eye to white supremacist violence while demonizing the left.

“This isn’t about a pop quiz,” Kamlager-Dove declared after the hearing. “It’s about whether the FBI is serious about protecting Americans from racist terror. Today’s testimony makes me doubt it.”