The FBI thwarted a potentially major terrorist attack set to target Michigan over Halloween weekend, the agency announced on Friday.
“This morning the FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack and arrested multiple subjects in Michigan who were allegedly plotting a violent attack over Halloween weekend,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in a triumphant post on X.
“More details to come. Thanks to the men and women of FBI and law enforcement everywhere standing guard 24/7 and crushing our mission to defend the homeland.”
The FBI’s field office in Detroit confirmed that agents had “conducted law enforcement activities” in the city of Dearborn, located around seven miles west of Detroit, and its neighboring suburb of Inkster.
The agency did not provide any additional information on the nature of the investigation, nor confirm any arrests, but stated that there is “no current threat to public safety.”
Dearborn’s Police Department also announced it was aware of FBI operations in the city in a since-deleted Facebook post, which failed to confirm the number of arrests that had taken place.
“We want to assure our residents that there is no threat to the community at this time,” the department wrote.
The incident appears to be a rare win for the increasingly under-fire FBI director, who has been desperate for good press after a string of gaffes and scandals.
Last month, Patel came under intense scrutiny during the hunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer, which saw agents fail to apprehend the suspected gunman until his own father turned him in, and Patel falsely tweetedbefore that a suspect was in custody prior to the arrest.
Later that month, an anonymous White House official tore into Patel for his lack of professionalism, telling Reuters that “his performance is really not acceptable to the White House or the American public.”
Patel also came under fire for his “shocking” testimony about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee, in which he attempted to defend Donald Trump’s links to the late child sex offender by claiming Epstein only trafficked young girls for himself.
“He has not read the reports himself; he has not spoken to the victims himself; and yet he plans to defer to unnamed officials from prior administrations who treated the reports as not credible?” a statement by survivors of Epstein’s victims read.
“Those previous administrations are the ones that Kash Patel spent years accusing of a cover-up. Now he will pass the buck to them to decide that information about other men in the Epstein-Maxwell trafficking ring is not even worth following up on?”
Trump, however, appears to be pleased with Patel’s tenure at the FBI, despite taking much of the credit for himself.
“The FBI, under my Administration, is doing an incredible job,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Oct. 20. “We are bringing LAW AND ORDER back to America. Kash, Dan, Andrew and the men and women of the FBI, are doing a tremendous job MAKING AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”
