The mood is miserable’: Inside Kash Patel’s chaotic FBI

Early on Hallowe’en morning, Kash Patel made a big announcement. “The FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack,” he said.

Except there was one problem: criminal charges had not yet been filed and local police were left in the dark.

Catching wind of their impending arrests, two alleged co-conspirators in the Islamic State-inspired plot to blow up a Michigan gay bar brought forward their getaway plans.

One suspect from New Jersey made it to Newark airport, where he planned to fly to Turkey to join IS, before he was detained by police, according to court documents.

The botched statement was not the first time the FBI director had jumped the gun.

In the frantic hours after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, when a manhunt was under way, he falsely claimed that the suspected killer was in custody.

In fact, they remained at large.

And in his latest gaffe, Mr Patel announced on Wednesday that he had “assembled the full force” of the bureau to find the suspect in the alleged shooting of two National Guards in Washington, DC, despite the fact that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, was already in custody.

The director has also been mired in scandal over his liberal use of private jets and Swat protection teams for his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, his re-orientation of the bureau to support the president’s tough stance on immigration and decision to fire agents perceived as disloyal have stoked bitterness among the rank and file.

After rumours swirled that the president is lining up a replacement for the embattled agency director, the White House quickly shut them down, branding it “fake news”.

But that did little to assuage the rumours, and fears over the direction of the bureau under its current command have agents on edge.

One former special agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Telegraph: “The mood is miserable. Morale has never been lower among the workforce. There is a feeling that every line agent has a target on his or her back.”

The social media bureau chief

A former podcaster who made his name railing against the Biden administration’s “weaponisation” of the FBI, Mr Patel’s one-of-the-guys approach has clashed with the straight-laced culture of the bureau.

Rather than the customary suit and tie, the director frequently shows up to press conferences in hoodies and hunting vests, colloquially refers to agents as “cops” and told podcaster Joe Rogan he found the job “effin wild”.

He is said to enjoy the trappings of the job, keeping a selection of luxury whisky and cigars in his office and handing out personalised “challenge” coins to members of staff.

The medallions, traditionally used by US soldiers to symbolise units or commands, feature an image of the Marvel character the “Punisher”, which has become a symbol of distrust in the justice system, and the number nine. Mr Patel is the ninth agency director.

According to the NBC, Mr Patel has slashed his daily intelligence briefings to two a week and cancelled weekly calls with field office leaders.

An FBI spokesman said the meeting schedule had been slimmed down based on feedback from staff.

Mr Patel has also considered hiring UFC trainers to improve agents’ martial arts and self-defence skills, sources told Reuters.

His social media presence has rankled some in the agency who would prefer he quietly get on with the job at hand.

“Staying ready for the mission,” read the caption to a recent photo of him jogging in sportswear alongside new recruits.

A lawsuit filed by three former agents, who claimed that they were fired by Mr Patel as part of a “campaign of retribution”, depicts the director and Dan Bongino, his top deputy and a former Right-wing influencer, as caricatures more invested in social media likes than running the country’s flagship law enforcement agency.

Steve Jensen, whom Mr Patel had chosen to run the agency’s Washington field office before firing him in August, said he worried Mr Bongino was spending more time “creating content for his social media pages” than on FBI investigations.

Tensions came to a head in September when Kirk was shot dead by a sniper during a talk at Utah Valley University.

Four hours after the attack, Mr Patel said the gunman had been arrested, only to admit an hour-and-a-half later that the man in question had been released.

The announcement sowed chaos during the early stages of the investigation and caused even Trump loyalists to question whether Mr Patel was up to the job.

“We would be wise to take a moment and ask whether Kash Patel has what it takes to get this done,” said Christopher Rufo, a prominent Republican commentator.

In its biggest test since Mr Patel was handed the reins of the bureau, the FBI failed to trace the alleged gunman over the course of a two-day manhunt, which only came to an end when suspect Tyler Robinson’s father handed him in.

Mr Patel flew to Utah after the shooting, but instead of speaking up, he stood sheepishly to the side of a televised press conference as Spencer Cox, the state’s governor, spoke to reporters.

Reports later emerged that Mr Patel described the manhunt as a “Mickey Mouse operation” and accused employees of keeping him out of the loop in an expletive-laden rant.

“That was strike one with an awful lot of the retired guys,” a former special agent told The Telegraph.

Private jets and Swat teams

Addressing well-wishers at a cocktail party in February celebrating his successful Senate confirmation hearing, Mr Patel joked: “All the people in this room have private jets, and the only way I was gonna get mine was becoming the director of the FBI.”

The remarks have since come back to bite Mr Patel amid allegations of using taxpayer-funded jets for personal travel, including to see his country-singer girlfriend perform and for a golfing holiday with friends.

In October, Mr Patel took the FBI’s private plane to Pennsylvania, where his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, was singing the national anthem at a freestyle wrestling event.t

Two days later, he flew to San Angelo, Texas, where the Wall Street Journal reported that he visited a luxury hunting spot, Boondoggle Ranch, owned by a Republican donor friend.

The flights took place at the height of the government shutdown, when much of the FBI workforce was not getting paid.

They also came against a backdrop of Mr Patel endorsing a White House plan to slash the FBI’s budget by around half a billion dollars, despite initially requesting additional funding.

Chief among his critics was Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent turned conservative podcaster, who accused the agency chief of using the jet to hang out with his “chick” during the shutdown.

Angered by the disclosures, Mr Patel fired a senior bureau official whom he blamed for not obscuring the plane’s tracking number, the New York Times (NYT) reported.

The jaunt came on top of a trip to Scotland in late August, when Mr Patel reportedly flew on a government jet to Inverness for a getaway with friends at the Carnegie Club, a private golf resort.

During the trip, 24/7 security personnel known as “ravens” were tasked with guarding the plane, according to the NYT.

The FBI director’s jet-setting lifestyle has fuelled allegations of hypocrisy, given he criticised Christopher Wray, his predecessor, for exactly the same reason.

“Maybe we ground that plane,” Mr Patel said. “Fifteen thousand dollars every time it takes off. Just a thought.”

Although the FBI director is legally obliged to travel on a government jet to have access to secure communications equipment, if taking a personal trip, they must reimburse the government for the cost of a commercial flight. Mr Patel has done so for each trip, a spokesman said.

He has taken only about a dozen personal trips since assuming the role in February and has taken steps to cut down on travel costs, a spokesman told WSJ.

Perceptions of Mr Patel criss-crossing the country on the taxpayer dime to see his girlfriend have not been helped by reports that he has also ordered Swat teams to protect her.

The specialised agents, trained to storm barricaded buildings and rescue hostages, were assigned to watch over Ms Wilkins during a performance in Atlanta this spring, the NYT reported.
However, seeing that the event was secure, they left, drawing the ire of Mr Patel, who grilled the team’s commander for what he deemed a failure to communicate their movements.

The unusual security setup has raised eyebrows among Maga supporters. Grace Chong, a conservative commentator, questioned why Ms Wilkins was entitled to the perks when she was not Mr Patel’s spouse.

Christopher O’Leary, a former marine and ex-FBI special agent, told the NYT that Mr Patel’s use of tactical teams to protect his girlfriend is “indicative of his lack of leadership experience, judgment and humility”.

And following Kirk’s killing in late September, agents from the Salt Lake City bureau who had worked long hours on the case were tasked with protecting Ms Wilkins at a Turning Point USA event amid concerns that she could be targeted.

A spokesman for the agency chief told the NYT: “Ms Wilkins is receiving a protective detail because she has faced hundreds of credible death threats related to her relationship with Director Patel.”

Loyalty tests and firings

Having first entered the president’s orbit in 2018, when, as a House staffer, he revealed that the FBI had targeted a former Trump campaign adviser, Mr Patel has since made it his mission to root out enemies of the president within the bureau, former agents said.

Since being sworn into office, he has fired at least 30 agents, including those who took the knee during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and one man who claims he was targeted after hanging a Pride flag on his office wall.

Several others who worked on Operation Arctic Frost, the investigation that led to the president being indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, have also been removed.

“You’re darn right I fired those agents,” Mr Patel told Fox News.

Three former bureau officials have accused the director of “politicising the FBI” and claimed that they were fired for their “failure to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty”, according to a lawsuit.

The case – brought by Brian Driscoll Jr, Steven Jensen and Spencer Evans – accuses Mr Patel of failing to stand up for agents when faced with pressure from White House officials.

At the heart of the pressure campaign was Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Emil Bove, a former department of justice (DOJ) appointee and Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, according to the lawsuit.

“Bove stated that he was receiving pressure from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to see ‘symmetrical action at the FBI as had been happening at DOJ’,” it read.

“Bove made clear that he and Miller wanted to see personnel action like reassignment, removals and terminations at the FBI.”

The president has long held a grudge against the agency over its investigation into Russian connections to his 2016 election campaign, Operation Arctic Frost, and the raid it carried out on his Mar-a-Lago home in 2020 to search for classified documents.

Mr Driscoll earned cult status among staff for pushing back against Mr Bove’s demands, which allegedly included drawing up a list of all the agents who worked on the Jan 6 investigation.

When challenged by Mr Driscoll, Mr Patel supposedly acknowledged that his own job “depended on the removal of the agents who worked on the cases against the president”, according to the court documents.

Heightening the atmosphere of suspicion, Mr Patel is said to have subjected senior FBI employees to polygraph tests in which they are asked if they have ever said anything negative about him, according to the NYT.

The firings have contributed to an exodus of top agents choosing to take early retirement, a former FBI agent said.

There is also concern among employees about Mr Patel’s shifting of the bureau’s priorities to focus on violent crime and immigration.

Nearly a quarter of all agents have been assigned to immigration enforcement, according to data obtained by the Democrats in October, which Mr Patel has said is part of letting “good cops be cops”.

A former agent said: “FBI agents are not cops. They’re involved in complex investigations, not doing foot patrols.

“The bureau has an awful lot of critical missions that may be going unaddressed when manpower is being used for these efforts.”

Speculation has been rife that Mr Patel could be on the chopping block in the new year.

Mr Trump has allegedly complained in recent months about his bureau chief’s handling of the Epstein files investigation, his haphazard media appearances and the perceived sluggishness with which he has carried out firings, according to the WSJ.

However, the two are now said to be on better terms and the White House dismissed claims that the president is lining up his successor as “completely made up”.

In pole position to replace Mr Patel is Andrew Bailey, a former Missouri attorney general who was appointed in October to serve as Mr Bongino’s co-deputy.

“I think he was brought in with that specific task in mind, but because of all this misfiring on the behalf of Patel, there might be reevaluating and seeing him as a go-to guy for the top job,” a former agent said.

With the administration on the back foot for the first time, a cabinet shake-up is rumoured to be in the offing.

If the president decides that heads must roll, Mr Patel may well be the first member of his cabinet to fall.

A White House spokesman said: “The president’s top priority is that the FBI has all the tools and resources necessary to ensure the safety of the American people. The White House will continue to coordinate with all executive agencies and protect our national security.”

Mr Patel and the FBI were contacted for comment.

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