Kash-y And The Jets
Wonder if anyone will lose their job for this insult to Charlie Kirk?
Worldwide party animal, social media shitposter, and occasional FBI Director Kash Patel has somehow gotten himself into a spot of bother over his trip to Milan, where he personally protected all the USA athletes from terrorism, or at least had a fun vacation on the public dime and chugged beer with the men’s hockey team. PBS headlined its AP coverage of the story with typical PBS solemnity: “Patel’s appearance at U.S. men’s hockey celebration renews scrutiny of FBI director’s travels.”
That story notes that the always-annoying White House comms director Steven Cheung told a reporter, annoyingly, “don’t be mad because America won,” so there.
But yes, Patel’s latest jet-fueled adventure has renewed that scrutiny, and it’s once more resurrected that 2023 clip of Patel complaining about then-FBI Director Christopher Wray traveling on the very same Department of Justice Gulfstream G550 business jet Patel can’t seem to get by without.
And Wray wasn’t even spraying beer all over any locker rooms!
Patel’s latest high-flying funtimes are also getting scrutiny from Senate Democrats, who yesterday revealed a whistleblower complaint saying that Patel’s jetscapades last year didn’t just waste taxpayer money, they also got in the way of FBI teams investigating the murder of Charlie Kirk in September and the deadly mass shooting at Brown University in December. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, revealed those screwups were discussed in a whistleblower report to his office; Durbin is pushing for a formal investigation of Patel’s “irresponsible joyriding on DOJ and FBI-operated aircraft.”
Not surprisingly, the FBI insists everything is just fine, although Patel himself hasn’t commented on the story; maybe he’s busy flying to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun.
In a letter to the Government Accountability Office and the DOJ’s Inspector General, Durbin reiterated his call in May for an investigation into Patel’s travel, back when Kash was simply wasting money going to MMA matches and his girlfriend’s place. He then got into the new revelations, noting that immediately after Kirk’s murder on September 10, the FBI’s “shooting reconstruction team” was ordered to Utah so it could process the crime scene and help with the investigation.
But the team was delayed by at least a day “because of a Bureau plane and pilot shortage caused by the Director’s personal flights.” Under FAA rules, pilots have to take mandatory rest periods, and are limited in how much total flight duty and cumulative travel they’re allowed, so the reconstruction team was grounded until the pilots had completed their required rest periods.
Keep in mind that when Patel himself flew to Utah to pretend he was helping the investigation, he reportedly refused to get off the plane until a suitable FBI raid jacket could be found for him, one that made him look like a serious FBI guy leading a raid on Buffalo Bill’s lair or something. Durbin’s letter didn’t even mention that little fuck-tussle, which Patel dismissed as fake news spread by disloyal Comey- and Wray-era holdovers, with the implication that they might be found and thrown out of the jet next time it flew over an ocean.
Durbin also left aside, for the moment at least, Patel’s multiple false claims that Kirk’s shooter had been arrested. Ultimately, it wasn’t Patel’s keen eye for photo ops or the FBI’s investigative savvy that found Kirk’s killer; the shooter’s parents turned him in. If they hadn’t, who knows how long the shooter might have remained at large?
Durbin went into more detail about Patel’s “misplaced priorities and poor management of the FBI’s resources” following the December 13 mass shooting at Brown. Wouldn’t you know it, it once again involved the shooting reconstruction team being stuck on the ground, according to the whistleblower. The team was ready to hop on a plane and fly to Providence, Rhode Island, but neither of the two FBI planes that should have been available could transport them.
As Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian explain at MS NOW, Patel was “in south Florida at the time with one of the FBI’s two available jets and had given an order to hold the other for another team that would not normally respond to the scene,” according to the whistleblower and three anonymous insiders who spoke to Leonnig and Dilanian. Instead, as the whistleblower explained, members of the response team had to drive overnight from where they were based in Quantico, Virginia, through a snowstorm, only arriving in Providence around 9:00 the next morning.
Hey, remember how the Brown shooter remained at large, killed an MIT professor on December 15, and wasn’t caught at all, but was found dead on December 18 after he shot himself in a storage unit? Maybe having the evidence team on site as soon as possible would have been useful, but we’ll never know. But at least before all that happened, Patel made more premature (wrong) announcements about a “person of interest” being identified (nope, wrong guy) and Trump claimed (also wrongly) that the killer had been caught.
Heckuva job, Kashy.
It’s not only that the one plane was in Florida with Kash while he visited his elderly parents; that’ll happen. But as the whistleblower pointed out, the larger problem was that Patel decided to put the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team on standby as soon as he learned of the shooting, which meant — whether he knew it or not, and knowing things is not his job — that the other jet was on standby, unavailable for any other FBI team’s use. Per Leonnig and Dilanian,
FBI officials were confused by his order as numerous SWAT team agents in the nearest local field offices — in this case, Boston and New York — would ordinarily be called upon to provide immediate support, rather than the Quantico, Virginia-based Hostage Rescue Team.
But don’t worry, FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson insisted the whistleblower was wrong, because agents from the Boston field office were on the scene in Providence within two hours, and besides, the mass shooting “was not immediately a case with federal nexus. It was a state-led homicide investigation.”
Williamson added that the plane in Florida could have been directed to Virginia if it were really needed, because “If the Director happens to be out of town, he always offers the plane” for other uses if it’s needed, but in this case, “It wasn’t needed.”
Then Peter Falk drove up in a beat up old Peugeot 403 convertible, excused himself for bothering Williamson, and said he just had one question: If the shooting reconstruction team wasn’t deemed particularly important in the immediate aftermath of the shooting rampage, why was it sent to drive from Virginia to Rhode Island overnight through a snowstorm? It’s probably nothing, but he just can’t see why they would have been in such a hurry, going out in a storm like that, if they weren’t needed.
The MS NOW story points out that while evidence collection specialists are posted to field offices, the “specialists based in the Quantico unit that oversees evidence review and crime scene reconstruction are some of its most experienced veterans and often deploy in the case of a major crime scene or mass shooting.” It’s one of those “best and brightest” things.
Then again, the Trump administration has never liked experts, so this will probably all blow over until the next time Kash Patel wants to have some fun and you losers get down on him for celebrating all the winning America is doing. It’s not like he left his bag of dildos on one plane and fired the pilot for not moving it to another one.
Allegedly!
OPEN THREAD!
[PBS (AP) / MSNOW / Senate Judiciary Committee / Courthouse News Service]
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Oh, but he's so spaced out.
Nice thing.
I ordered a new small pride flag to go on the back of Xena: Warrior Scooter as the old one had faded and gotten dirty. The new one was supposed to come as a set of three but god is a lesbian and I received 12.
I shall be spreading the pride with my extra flags at the next No Kings.
ETA: pictures!
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-219781921?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc