FBI Director Kash Patel’s motivation for draping himself in special agent cosplay has been uncovered.
Patel, 46, was sworn in as FBI director in February last year, replacing Christopher Wray, who kept a relatively low media profile.
Patel, however, has embraced the public aspect of his role, spotted at crime scenes and media appearances while sporting the FBI blue blazer. The jacket has bright yellow “FBI” lettering on the back and chest for rapid identification by colleagues to avoid friendly fire.
A new episode of The New York Times’ podcast The Daily, titled, “Inside Kate Patel’s FBI," examines the origin story of Patel’s work attire. Turns out, the president had some sway.
Former FBI senior executive and intelligence analyst John Sullivan, who retired in April 2025 after 17 years service, recalled the arrival of Patel and former Fox News host and fellow conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino to the bureau last year.
“With Dan Bongino’s selection to be his deputy director, I realized in that moment that it was not going to be OK,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan recalled Patel and Bongino making “a big push for optics” at the FBI, which included bureau-branded fashion. He learned during a senior leaders’ conference that President Donald Trump “had seen video footage or pictures of the raids that were being conducted around the United States, and was angry that he did not see the well-known FBI flak jackets with the yellow ‘FBI’ on the back.”
Sullivan also mentioned a social media video Patel posted in March last year filmed at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, a base for officer training and combat development. He noted that in the video, Patel, who is in army camouflage fatigues, wearing sunglasses and an FBI cap, was “cosplaying as Rambo, being around explosions and people rappelling from helicopters.”
He added the videos were done to portray “this idea of the FBI’s tough and he is tough, which then takes away resources and time and money and energy from those teams so he can film something at a training ground or at a Quantico.”
Sullivan noted, “to many people, those videos, myself included, looked completely childish. The director, the leader of the FBI, is representing the organization in a juvenile manner. And the work that we do and did was supremely serious.”
Shortly after leaving the FBI last year, Sullivan appeared on Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast and claimed Patel and Bongino were “really doing everything possible to make us less safe and please Donald Trump.”
On The Daily podcast, Times journalist Rachel Abrams claimed that because Fox News-obsessed Trump is fixated on how something looks on TV, Patel and Bongino were “essentially prioritizing the politics, the optics and maybe even the marketing of the FBI over the job itself.”
That included the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September last year, which fellow Times reporter Emily Bazelon said was “like a performance.”
Patel was widely criticized for his actions during investigations after Kirk was shot during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University.
The embarrassed FBI director had to walk back a social media post claiming the suspected shooter was in custody.
An anonymous White House official later told Reuters that his premature post was unprofessional, adding that Patel’s “performance is really not acceptable to the White House or the American public.”
The Daily also reported on the misinformation around the Kirk case coming from the top of the FBI, with Times journalist Rachel Posner stating that Patel had attempted to immediately “jump into the center of the action” in Utah, “which is very unusual for an FBI director.”
She added that during the Kirk case, Patel was “scripting out his social media strategy” and telling Bongino and the field office “what to tweet. All of this takes a lot of time and attention away from the investigation.”
The podcast also claims that some FBI agents told them Patel and Bongino insisted they “take pictures for social media while they were out doing raids and making arrests,” and felt that it compromised not only operational security, but their personal safety.
“It was really putting the politics and the optics over the mission,” Posner said.
Bongino announced his resignation from the FBI on December 17, 2025, after serving less than a year in the role, and has returned to making a podcast. President Trump was his first guest, as well as a back-patting chat with Patel.
He told Patel, “I think you and I did a pretty good job, but you know, it really isn’t hard when you focus on the bad guys.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI and the White House for comment.
