FBI Director Kash Patel moaned about only getting to see “15 percent” of his girlfriend’s country gigs while trying to defend his taxpayer-funded jet jaunts.
Patel, 45, has come under fire for repeatedly using a $60 million government jet to visit his 27-year-old girlfriend Alexis Wilkins in Nashville, as well as to travel to UFC matches, hockey games, and hunting trips.
During an appearance alongside Wilkins on Katie Miller’s podcast Tuesday, Patel dismissed the backlash over his jet rides as “nonsense” and complained that previous FBI directors never faced similar scrutiny.
“No one told them not to go on vacation,” Patel whined. “And it’s ironic that they’re saying, ‘Oh, you’re going on vacation, or you’re going to see your girlfriend perform.’”
“If I was actually abusing it, I would go see every one of her shows. I think I get to, like, 15 percent.”
Asked by Miller how often he’d visited Wilkins, Patel said, “I’ve been to her house a couple times with her family for the holidays and, you know, birthdays. I’ve seen her perform this year, I think, three times.”
As FBI director, Patel is required by executive branch policy to use the FBI’s plane for personal use. When doing so, he is responsible for paying the cost of a commercial flight ticket, while American taxpayers are on the hook for all other fees related to the flight, which can total tens of thousands of dollars. Patel was a vocal critic of previous FBI directors using the jet for personal use before he got the gig.
Patel said he and Wilkins were mindful of not burdening taxpayers and had come up with a cost-conscious “template” where they would “cross paths when we can.”
“We took that on and said, ‘Well, let’s figure this out,’ because we don’t want to just run around,” he said. “And she’s totally understanding. She’s like, ‘If you can’t see me this weekend, that’s OK.’”
But Just the News reported last month that Patel has taken at least six trips to Nashville, where Wilkins is based, as well as 10 trips to Las Vegas, where he owns a home.
The Bulwark revealed that Patel took his first trip to Nashville just three days after being sworn in. His jet then made two round-trip flights on March 14 and 16, traveling from Manassas, a regional airport near Washington D.C., to Nashville. On March 21, the jet returned to Nashville for the fourth time in a month.
The FBI director’s jet use became a national scandal when it was revealed that he flew to Pennsylvania to see Wilkins perform at a wrestling event on Oct. 25, before flying to Nashville later that same day.
Patel said he had “kind of expected some scrutiny” about his jet use and therefore required the bureau to route his travel through government airfields rather than commercial airports. He claimed that it saves taxpayers $4,000 to $7,000 per trip.
But cross-country jet rides aren’t the only way the Trump official has dipped into taxpayer coffers for his girlfriend. It was revealed in November that Patel had assigned an entire team of FBI SWAT agents to act as security for Wilkins.
And earlier this month, sources told MS Now that he had at least twice ordered Wilkins’s security detail to escort one of her allegedly drunken friends home.
Meanwhile, Wilkins—who began dating Patel in 2023—has run a very public “propose already” campaign on social media. But patience may be required.
“It’s definitely coming, so I wouldn’t worry about it. And the beautiful thing about us is that it doesn’t matter. There’s no, like, timeline,” he told Miller, the wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
The negative headlines generated by Kash’s alleged misuse of taxpayer funds have been compounded by his repeated bungling of high-profile cases—most recently the mass shooting at Brown University.
Patel remains unapologetic about his tenure, however.
“We are literally having the best year the FBI has ever had,” he told Miller.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI for comment.
