In high school, a lithesome girl such as Alexis Wilkins would have walked past a loathsome guy like Kash Patel as if he were a wall locker.
So it is not surprising that 46-year-old Patel has seemed keen to impress his 27-year-old gal pal Wilkins with his unlikely importance, beginning with having her at his side when he took the federal oath of office last year.
They both appeared to be delighted with themselves as he swore to support and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That Constitution includes the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press, even when it comes to articles about your girlfriend.
Patel got the job partly because of irrational right-wing ravings and deep state conspiracy theories such as he put forth in his 2023 book Government Gangsters. He has called the mainstream media the “fake news mafia.” They are, he claims, “the most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen.”
Yet, when New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson revealed that the FBI had been providing security and protection to Wilkins, Patel responded like a Cosa Nostra capo whose goomah has been slighted.
A mob boss would have had a couple of thugs find out what they could about the offender, and pay him a visit. Patel, the New York Times reported, had a supervisory agent at FBI headquarters run a check on Williamson. The agent then reportedly sought permission from the Department of Justice to open an investigation into whether Williamson violated stalking laws when reporting the story.
The only surprise in all that is that the DOJ declined to authorize the investigation, for reasons that are not immediately clear.
But even as the Trump administration continually presses us to cynically expect the worst, we should still recognize when enough is enough.
As FBI director, Patel is behaving as one of the very enemies he is sworn to defend the Constitution against.
In defense of himself, Patel had posted on X that Alexis merited a SWAT team to provide transport and security as she sang the national anthem at a country club fundraiser.
“She is a rock-solid conservative and a country music sensation who has done more for this nation than most will in ten lifetimes,” he insisted.
Patel made that statement as the head of a law enforcement agency that has seen 102 agents and employees die in the line of duty, working without overtime, instead putting in extra hours “for the bird,” the American eagle.
Kyle “Trigger” Coroneos, editor of the website Saving Country Music says that as of January, Wilkins was not exactly a sensation. “But even though it’s fair to characterize Alexis Wilkins as a country music singer, it’s also fair to contextualize that she’s never released a full-length album, she hasn’t released a single or EP since 2023, has never appeared on any charts, she doesn’t make regular appearances at prominent country music festivals, mainstream or independent,” he wrote.
“As someone who works professionally covering country music full-time, I couldn’t recall hearing of Wilkins before the fracas surrounding her relationship with Kash Patel.”
On Tuesday, Patel appeared at a joint press conference with acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to announce the indictment of the social justice non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center for allegedly defrauding donors. Blanche is apparently hoping that such MAGA popular moves will make him a permanent replacement for fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, a sycophantic mean girl who was fired on what happened to be April Fools Day.
A reporter asked Patel off-topic about an article in The Atlantic that says he has a drinking problem that interferes with his duties.
“I never listen to the fake news mafia,” Patel said as if he were the one up against thugs.
The FBI director who behaves like he might rightly be called the Capo de Tutti Frutti denied a report that he had at one point been briefly locked out of his computer and momentarily feared he had himself been fired.
“The problem with you and your baseless reporting is that it is an absolute lie,” he said. “It was never said, it never happened, and I will serve in this administration as long as the president and attorney general ask me to do so.”
Patel added, “The simple answer to your question is, ‘You are lying.’ … I was never locked out of my systems. … Anyone that says the opposite is lying.’”
The problem for Patel is that a $250 million defamation suit he filed against The Atlantic acknowledges that his computer did experience a “routing technical problem.”
“Director Patel had a routine technical problem logging into a government system, which was quickly fixed,” his own suit says.
Before the Times published Williamson’s Feb. 28 article headlined “Kash Patel’s Girlfriend Seeks Fame and Fortune, Escorted by an F.B.I. SWAT Team,” an FBI spokesman said that Wilkins had received numerous death threats that justified the security. The one person known to have been investigated for delivering such a threat allegedly did so via email on the day the Times article was published.
The FBI subsequently arrested 26-year-old Alden Welch Ruml of Cambridge, Mass for “Threats in Instate Commerce.” The felony indictment mentions a “federal official” only identified as “a high ranking employee in the United States Government.” Wilkins is identified only as ”Person 1.”
“Person 1 has a personal relationship with the federal official,” the indictment says.
The indictment quotes the email as saying, “Do you know h0w happy I’ll be when your c--t a-- face is canoed by an assault rifle? Tick tock bitch. Watch your back.”
Four devil emojis follow.
An FBI affidavit in the case file notes, “On February 28, 2026, a news article was published describing the use of FBI resources to provide security to Person 1. The article also described Person 1 and the Federal Official’s conservative political views and their association with the Make America Great Again (“MAGA”) political movement."
The affidavit further reports, “RUML stated that he had read the February 28, 2026 news article described above and became upset, leading him to send the threatening email.“
In other words, the one documented death threat had been triggered by the Times report of the FBI supplying transportation and security to Patel’s girlfriend.
“RUML denied any intent of harming anyone through violence or harmful words,” the affidavit added.
Death threats are legitimate cause for law enforcement investigations,
A story that simply displeases Patel is not.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Patel was asked if “you used the FBI because you didn’t like a story about your girlfriend.”
“Absolutely not,” Patel replied. “The reality is that this same reporter delivered a baseless story which delivered a direct threat of life to my girlfriend. But here’s the thing: me and mine are like you and President Trump. We’re as tough as we come.”
So spoke a self-proclaimed tough guy who swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies and then acted as one of them.
