FBI Director Kash Patel is quite unhappy that details of his taxpayer‑funded trip to the Winter Olympics were leaked.
After The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Patel spent only “several hours” in total at official events during his trip to Milan, Italy—despite his team insisting the visit was for official bureau business—the FBI director’s spokesman pushed back against the revelation.
“The leaking of his minute-by-minute schedule is a criminal act that jeopardizes security and will not be taken lightly,” FBI spokesperon, Ben Williamson, told The Times in a follow up statement Wednesday morning.
Williamson has been defensive on Patel’s behalf since the trip was first reported on. Last week, Williamson accussed CBS News of publishing a story that was “designed to mislead,” regarding its reporting that Patel was flying to Italy to attend the Olympics.
In an effort to combat that narrative, Williamson himself posted numerous photos of Patel during his Italian work meetings—outlined in the itinerary published by the Times.
The itinerary leaked to the outlet was labeled “unclassified,” meaning it was a non-secret document that listed the start and end times of Patel’s official meetings during his trip.
The leaked itinerary showed that Patel spent nearly six and a half hours watching two hockey games. Numoerous videos and photos show that Patel was chugging beer with Team USA after they defeated Canada in a frat-style party that since been criticized. Williamson maintained that the trip was focused on “highly productive meetings.”
Patel’s schedule shows he attended six public meetings and two classified briefings during the trip, but The Times report indicates that the time he spent at official events was less “productive” than his spokesperson claims.
After arriving in Italy on Thursday, Patel’s weekend in Europe included a single 20-minute briefing with the Olympic security team—held on the second-to-last day of the Games, weeks after operations had begun—and a visit to the operations center scheduled to last 30 minutes.
On Saturday, the FBI director had roughly four and a half hours of leisure time, and on Sunday, he attended the USA–Canada hockey gold-medal game before flying back to the United States. Critics noted that the bureau was contending with the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, a gunman breaching Mar-a-Lago, and the Mexican government killing the leader of a top cartel during Patel’s Italian trip.
Following backlash over Patel’s drinking video with the U.S. men’s hockey team, Patel posted a message on X to “the very concerned media,” claiming that he loves America and was “extremely humbled” to be invited “into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys.”
Patel also posted numerous photos attending the event.
According to MS NOW, the video caused “outrage” not only in the media, but also amongst FBI and Justice Department officials.
Patel, who has made a habit of criticizing his predecessors for taxpayer-funded travel, has previously faced scrutiny over his own use of private jets, particularly when traveling to visit his 27-year-old country musician girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins.
On Tuesday, Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General outlining concerns that the frequent use of federally funded private jets may have delayed the FBI’s response to high-profile investigations.
The letter claimed that whistleblowers have highlighted to Sen. Durbin 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.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI for comment.
The post Keystone Kash Melts Down at His Italian Boondoggle Being Busted appeared first on The Daily Beast.
