FBI Director Kash Patel is confronting a serious alleged security breach after hackers claimed they stole personal information belonging to bureau employees and job applicants.

ShinyHunters, a notorious hacking group, said the data included FBI agents’ names, home addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth, as well as information about some of their spouses.

The group also defaced the FBI’s recruitment website on Tuesday, posting the message: “This site has been seized by ShinyHunters.” The wording appeared to parody the seizure notices the bureau places on criminal websites it has taken offline.

The hackers also mocked Donald Trump, ending their message with the president’s familiar Truth Social sign-off: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

In an interview with 404 Media, which first reported the alleged FBI breach, one of the hackers issued a threatening message aimed at the Trump administration.

“What we plan to do is not something I’d call extortion, maybe coercion,” the hacker said, insisting that the operation was “not financially motivated.”

ShinyHunters typically steals data before demanding a ransom, threatening to publish additional files if victims refuse to pay.

The FBI said in a statement to the Daily Mail: “The FBI is aware of claims regarding unauthorized activity affecting FBIjobs.gov and is currently investigating.”

A sample of 5,000 records released by the hackers contained purported addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth. Some entries also included information about spouses.

Checks by 404 Media found that some leaked phone numbers corresponded to people with matching names in open-source intelligence databases. Several were also connected to Justice Department personnel, the outlet reported.

The message posted on the FBI jobs website claimed the hackers had obtained personal and health information on current and former bureau employees, along with data on every applicant.

“We have a lot more than we claim here,” the message added.

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The website was later taken offline. A notice said the Special Agent Applicant Portal was “currently unavailable.”

The FBI has previously warned that criminals linked to ShinyHunters use stolen personal information to target and harass victims and their families.

The hackers’ representative claimed the attack began on Monday night after they exploited a previously unknown software vulnerability, known as a zero-day, in Oracle’s PeopleSoft system.

The group further claimed it had reached Amazon’s AWS GovCloud servers, a cloud platform designed to store sensitive US government data, and had taken between two and three terabytes of files.

The Daily Mail has contacted Oracle and Amazon seeking comment.

The alleged FBI data breach comes as Patel, 46, faces growing scrutiny over a series of controversies at the bureau since he was sworn in as FBI director in February last year.

Patel last week faced heated questioning at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over changes to FBI hiring standards involving prostitution and bestiality. 

Patel defended the changes, saying they were meant to let victims of those acts apply for FBI jobs without being automatically disqualified.

In April, Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic over an article alleging mismanagement at the agency and excessive drinking, claims he denies. 

He has also faced scrutiny over his use of the bureau’s $60 million jet, including a trip to see his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, perform at a Penn State wrestling event last year. 

Patel has insisted he is ‘entitled to a personal life just like my other agency counterparts with their partners.’

Jehovah’s Witnesses will be allowed to accept medical treatments derived from another person’s blood in a landmark policy shift described as “massively significant” for patient safety.

However, the Christian denomination’s leaders will continue to oppose “whole blood” transfusions, maintaining that they are forbidden under biblical teaching.

The historic change applies to treatments involving blood components such as red and white blood cells, plasma and platelets.

Previously, Jehovah’s Witnesses were instructed to reject all treatments derived from another person’s blood. The policy was based on Acts 15:20, which urges believers to “abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood”.

Earlier this year, the governing body representing the denomination’s estimated nine million members approved the use of a worshipper’s own blood. That ruling allowed patients to have blood collected and stored in advance for a possible transfusion.

The latest guidance states that choosing to accept red cells, white cells, plasma or platelets taken from another person will now be considered “a matter of personal conscience”.

Medical ethics specialists called the decision a “big change in teaching”. It could give Jehovah’s Witnesses—including around 144,000 worshippers in the UK—access to potentially life-saving treatment that many would previously have declined.

Over the past 15 years, courts have dealt with several high-profile cases in which doctors sought permission to override religious objections to blood treatment. Many involved parents who had refused consent for their children to receive potentially life-saving care.

Dominic Wilkinson, a professor of medical ethics at Oxford University, told The Times that parents had often been caught between medical warnings about their child’s condition and the teachings of their faith.

“They have had to choose between those two things, which has been a massive dilemma for some families and has led to court cases on a number of occasions,” he said.

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“This is very good news. It will significantly reduce the dilemma for both parents and health professionals.”

Professor Wilkinson said whole-blood transfusions would still be necessary in some situations, but described the new position as a “massively significant step”. He said doctors could now use other blood-derived products to help save lives after trauma or during gynaecological surgery.

He added that refusing blood-related treatment had produced “very real consequences” for patients.

The Association of Jehovah’s Witnesses for Reform on Blood, or AJWRB, which has campaigned for changes to the policy, estimates that refusals of blood treatment are associated with about 1,200 excess deaths each year.

The revised guidance also permits worshippers to donate blood. Leaders said: “Each Witness must decide whether or not to donate blood for the clearly expressed purpose of providing components or fractions for use by another person.”

Paul Gillies, an international spokesman for the denomination, which is headquartered in Warwick, New York, said: “Blood remains sacred to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who continue to regard life and blood as precious gifts from God.”

“We recognise that medical decisions involving blood components are a matter of conscience between each Witness and their God, Jehovah,” he added.

In a statement referring to the earlier decision on the use of a patient’s own blood, the governing body said: “Since the Bible does not comment on such decisions, they are a matter of individual conscience.”

“That same reasoning has now been extended to the four main components of blood.”

‘Jehovah’s Witnesses love life and want the best available medical care.

‘They do not practice faith healing, and they seek out doctors who can provide effective treatment in accord with their wishes, values and beliefs.’

Blake Neff credits Tucker Carlson with launching his career.

Now, however, he says he struggles to understand what his former boss appears to have become.

“What I think has driven a lot of what Tucker has done in the last year or so is he’s indulged negative traits within him more and more,” Neff, a co-host of The Charlie Kirk Show and former lead writer for Carlson, told Jeremy Boreing.

Excerpts from Boreing’s interview with Neff were shared exclusively with the Daily Mail. The full conversation will air on The Jeremy Boreing Show today at 3pm central/4pm eastern time.

Neff has known Carlson for years. At 26, he was working as a reporter for Carlson’s website, The Daily Caller, when Carlson launched his primetime Fox News program, Tucker Carlson Tonight.

In 2016, Carlson recruited Neff from the newsroom to help write his Fox News monologues, which helped define the show’s tone and influenced the broader conservative movement at the time. Neff resigned from Fox News in 2022 after several apparently racist blog posts surfaced. He has said the posts were jokes that critics took out of context.

Neff later joined The Charlie Kirk Show as a writer and producer. Only a few years afterward, he was standing about 20 feet from Kirk when the conservative activist was killed by an assassin on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

That history gives Neff a distinctive perspective on a turbulent period in conservative media, as former allies clash over the Trump administration, the war in Iran and the circumstances surrounding Kirk’s death.

Podcasters including Candace Owens and Carlson’s younger brother, Buckley, have promoted various conspiracy theories about Kirk’s killing.

In March, Buckley Carlson retweeted a message claiming that Kirk’s killing was a “black magic ritual.”

Neff told Boreing that the last time he communicated with Carlson, he asked him to urge his brother to stop spreading conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death.

Neff said Carlson, who frequently discusses his close personal and professional relationship with Kirk, refused to intervene.

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“The last communication I had with Tucker was: Tucker, just privately, can you ask your brother to just stop pushing this Candace stuff? And he wouldn’t… He refused to ask,” Neff said.

“I don’t think Tucker in 2018 would have had that response to someone he has a close relationship with spreading incredibly hateful lies about innocent people,” he added.

The Daily Mail contacted representatives for Carlson for comment.

Neff also alleged that Carlson now appears willing to accept almost any damaging claim about people he regards as opponents without questioning it.

“He’ll believe anything negative,” Neff said. “Israel did this war that I powerfully hate, so why wouldn’t they have murdered Charlie? Why wouldn’t they have murdered President Kennedy, which he’s also suggested is something they did. And then that transitions into, let’s be frank, carrying water for people who are pushing the most hateful and deranged conspiracy theory. I would say it’s at least on par with people who say Sandy Hook was faked.”

Indeed, Neff seems to be pained to criticize a man for whom he once worked.

‘I owe my entire career to the fact that Tucker plucked me out [of the Daily Caller] and said, would you like to be the writer for my show at Fox? The bottom level of hell in Dante’s Inferno is for people who have betrayed masters. Tucker was a benefactor to me, but Charlie was a benefactor to me too.’

As to why Carlson has made this alarming transformation, Neff – who has not worked with Carlson for six years – has a theory:

‘He has some grievances that he has fixed upon. He has always been passionately against [America] going to war with Iran. He was paranoid that we would go to war with Iran way back when I was at the Daily Caller.

‘I think the fact that it finally happened was just profoundly upsetting to him. Also, I think he’s spoken about it himself, that he felt a little powerless to stop it. And this has made him so angry.

‘Tucker’s so fixated on his personal beef with Israel that he’s going to enable people who are going to lie about [Turning Point USA], lie about the good people at it and try to rip it to smithereens.

‘He’s let this real grievance of his take over everything. It’s consumed everything. He just refuses to see the huge damage that he’s doing to individual people as a result of this,’ Neff concluded.