King says the FBI should have informed the White House immediately. King: 'Crisis of major proportions'

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Monday the FBI was “derelict in its duty” when it failed to tell the White House immediately after learning about former CIA Director David Petraeus’s affair.

“Once the FBI realized that it was investigating the director of the CIA or the CIA director had come within its focus or its scope, I believe at that time they had an absolute obligation to tell the president,” King said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Not to protect David Petraeus, but to protect the president.”


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“The fact is he is a key part of the president’s foreign policy team, maybe more than any other CIA director in recent times,” King added.

“He was going around the world negotiating various understandings and agreements, I’m aware of that. And to have someone out there in such a sensitive position who the FBI thought perhaps could have been compromised or was under the scope of an FBI investigation who may or may not have been having an affair at the time, that to me had to have been brought to the president or certainly to the National Security Council. If not, the FBI was derelict in its duty.”

“This is a crisis, I believe, of major proportions,” King added. “This is not the usual political thing. We’re not talking about the secretary of commerce or some undersecretary somewhere.”

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King, who said he had hoped Petraeus would run for president in 2012, said he was concerned the scandal could expand.

“I’m not into conspiracy theories, but I certainly have questions,” said King, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee and sits on the Intelligence Committee. “For instance, my first concern is with the FBI: why they went ahead with the investigation and why they didn’t tell somebody above. If they did tell somebody above, it would have been [Attorney General] Eric Holder. And in that case, Holder should have gone to the president.”