Kash Patel Uses FBI As His Girlfriend’s Uber
When Donald Trump selected Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, initial concerns from critics revolved around the president tapping a staunch loyalist and deep-state conspiracy theorist to lead one of the nation’s key intelligence agencies. While apprehension surrounding Patel’s beliefs remain, he has recently come under fire for his use of government resources: utilizing a required FBI plane for personal trips and providing his country-singer girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, a security detail of FBI SWAT agents based in the Nashville field office.
Now a new report suggests that Wilkins’s security perks extend beyond her own personal use. Sources tell MS NOW that Wilkins directed members of her security detail to escort her friends home following late-night partying in Nashville at least twice this year. According to the outlet, when agents initially balked at diverting from their assignment to follow Wilkins’s order, Patel backed her request with sources saying the FBI director yelled at the leader of Wilkins’s detail on one occasion over the issue. In a statement to MS NOW, the FBI denied the report. “This is made up and did not happen,” FBI spokesman Ben Williamson said.
But it was MS NOW that first broke the news of Wilkins’s detail, reporting that has since been substantiated by other outlets. The New York Times reports that FBI agents have been reassigned on multiple occasions to provide security for Wilkins at events in Georgia and Utah, a move that Patel has said is a necessity due to threats that have been made against him and Wilkins. But a girlfriend of an FBI director receiving a security detail is an unusual occurrence with past directors’ spouses typically receiving that level of protection on specific occasions when warranted.
Wilkins has also traveled with Patel on his director-allocated government jet, that he’s required to use, as he accompanied her to a performance in State College, Pennsylvania. (Kyle Seraphin, a podcaster and former FBI agent, shared public flight logs on social media that appeared to confirm the use of the government plane.) After news of the Pennsylvania trip went viral, Patel fired an FBI official who supervised aviation for the agency, according to Bloomberg. Patel has also used the plane to travel to Scotland for a golf trip with friends and to a Texas hunting retreat called the Boondoggle Ranch, per The Wall Street Journal.
The FBI director has denounced criticism of his travel, suggesting that he travels far less than his two most recent predecessors. Patel was a vocal critic of former FBI director Christopher Wray, once saying that he “doesn’t need a government-funded G5 jet to go to vacations.”
“I’m entitled to a personal life just like my other agency counterparts with their partners. Do I support my girlfriend? Absolutely. And do I take trips with her? Absolutely,” Patel said in a Fox News interview earlier this week.
Patel’s use of government resources has caught the attention of Democrats in Congress. On Monday, House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin and Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove sent a letter to Patel, requesting travel records for Patel and any nongovernmental employee on federal aircrafts as well as justification for those passengers’ travel. The committee set a deadline for December 15 at 5 p.m. for Patel to fulfill the request.
“Why should American taxpayers be footing the bill for private jets every time you decide to hang out with your golf buddies, see your girlfriend, or go to your ‘boondoggle’ escape?,” they wrote.