CRIME TIME

Donald Trump Takes Credit for Keystone Kash Patel’s ‘Incredible’ FBI

The president gloated over stats on violent crime arrests.

Donald Trump has taken credit for the “incredible” success of the FBI, with only a brief mention of the bureau’s director Kash Patel.

Trump, 79, listed a string of FBI crime stats on his Truth Social account on Monday night, including over 28,000 arrests for crimes from human trafficking to fentanyl distribution.

“The FBI, under my Administration, is doing an incredible job,” the president wrote, before listing the bureau’s achievements since his inauguration on January 20.

“We are bringing LAW AND ORDER back to America,” Trump’s post concluded, before thanking Patel, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino and Co-Deputy Director Andrew Bailey for “MAKING AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”

White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson defended the president when quizzed on Trump’s post by the Daily Beast.

“Only the sick Democrat activists at the Daily Beast would try to attack a nice post from President Trump praising the tremendous success of the FBI arresting dangerous criminals, rescuing innocent children, and removing illegal drugs from the streets,” Jackson said.

Patel, who was sworn in on February 21, replacing Christopher A. Wray, was quick to share Trump’s post on his X account. “Thank you for your leadership letting good cops be cops Mr President,” he wrote.

Patel has had a bumpy ride since becoming the youngest person to be appointed as FBI director.

During the hunt for the suspect in the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last month, Patel was forced to backtrack after he posted that officials had apprehended “the subject of the shooting” to his nearly 2 million X followers. He then admitted that the individual had nothing to do with the attack.

JUST GETTING STARTED

Keystone Kash Warns Trump Revenge Arrests Just the Beginning

Farrah Tomazin

Patel’s testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee last month was also labeled “shocking” by survivors who were victimized by Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The FBI director claimed that Epstein had only trafficked young girls to himself.

Bongino also shared Trump’s Truth Social post on his X account. “Thank you Mr. President. We will not let up.”

The 50-year-old was busy talking up the FBI’s 28,000 violent crime arrests this year on Fox and Friends on Monday, calling criminals “demon savages.”

“The prior three, four years, the FBI under prior leadership would average at about 15,000, 16,000 [arrests],” Bongino claimed. “We’re at 28,000. We’re not even done with the year. We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving or Christmas yet. Shows when you get a president, an attorney general, a deputy attorney general, and an FBI leadership team that lets the FBI do FBI work instead of getting into other nonsense in the past-look what happens. Your cities get cleaner.”

The deputy director also spoke of Trump’s “zero tolerance” for crime.

BEST OF FRIENDS?

Keystone Kash Loses It Over Report That Colleagues Hate Him

Ewan Palmer

“He drives around Washington, D.C., on these off the record movements,” Bongino said. “He sees homelessness, crime, he can’t stand it. He says, ‘What do we got to do to fix this?’ And we basically lay out a bunch of things, and his answer is very simple. [The] President’s like, ‘Go get ‘em, boys. Go get them.’ That was it. Like, you do what you have to do.”

FBI crime data released in October 2024 showed that violent crime fell by an estimated 3 percent between 2022 and 2023.

The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI for comment.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Cameron AdamsReporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.