Kash Patel’s frequent use of federally funded private jets allegedly delayed the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s response to high-profile investigations—including the killing of Charlie Kirk and a deadly mass shooting at Brown University.
In a letter to the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said credible whistleblowers told him that “[not only are] the Director’s misuse and mismanagement of these aircraft problematic to taxpayers, they materially harm the mission of the very agency he has sworn to lead.”
Durbin revealed that the FBI’s shooting reconstruction team was delayed at least a day after Kirk was shot on a Utah campus in September because of a “Bureau plane and pilot shortage caused by the Director’s personal flights.”
“FAA rules dictate the maximum flight duty, cumulative travel, and rest periods for pilots, and the FBI team could only travel after the pilots’ mandated rest periods were completed,” the Illinois Democrat wrote Tuesday.
What’s more, Durbin said Patel’s jetsetting left an FBI response team with no option but to drive overnight through a snowstorm on Dec. 13 to reach Brown after a gunman stormed the campus, killing two students and wounding nine others. According to MS NOW, Patel was in South Florida with one of the agency’s two private jets at the time of the shooting and chose not to return until the following afternoon.
Two days later, on Dec. 15, suspect Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente killed a prominent nuclear fusion professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Valente remained at large for five days before police found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“Since his confirmation as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kash Patel has seemingly engaged in what amounts to irresponsible joyriding on DOJ and FBI-operated aircraft at the expense of the American taxpayer and to the detriment of ongoing Bureau operations,” Durbin wrote.
The lawmaker further claimed that a whistleblower told him and his staff that Patel said in a meeting with field offices last year, “If you have golf, hockey, fishing, or hunting and beautiful sights, you’re going to see a lot of me.”
Durbin also pointed to another controversy involving Patel, who was filmed partying with U.S. Olympians at the Winter Olympics in Milan the same day an armed intruder was shot outside President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
Patel’s latest getaway also comes as authorities enter the fourth week of a search in Arizona for the missing mother of Savannah Guthrie, which has yielded little public information. Durbin concluded with a call for an investigation into Patel’s potential misuse of funds.
FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson wrote on X: “The Brown U thing is totally false but the Charlie Kirk allegation is even more egregious. Kash was in DC on 9/10 and in New York the next day for the 9/11 ceremonies - not personal travel. Durbin and whoever he’s speaking to are full of it.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI for clarification on the additional allegations.
Patel first faced scrutiny over his travel habits after reports in October revealed he took a government jet to see his girlfriend, 27, perform at a wrestling event in Pennsylvania on Oct. 25 before flying to her home base of Nashville later that same day. Though Patel previously criticized his predecessors’ use of government aircraft, he has taken at least six trips to Nashville and ten to Las Vegas—where he owns a home—Just the News reported last year.
