FBI Director Kash Patel’s underlings are jumping to defend their boss from criticism for using the FBI’s $60 million plane to take his 26-year-old girlfriend on a cross-country date.
He was busted jetting with Alexis Williams, a country singer, from State College in Pennsylvania, where she had been performing at a wrestling match, to Nashville, Tennessee, thanks to Instagram posts and flight records.
But Ben Williamson, the FBI’s assistant director of public affairs, used his X account to call criticisms of Patel’s travel habits “disingenuous and dumb.”
“Kash has significantly limited personal travel - but he’s allowed to take personal time on occasion to see family, friends or his longtime girlfriend,” he said in his lengthy post. “He doesn’t do it often. He works far more full weekends than he does otherwise.”
Patel, 45, was seen at a Real American Freestyle wrestling event at Penn State University, in State College, on Saturday, Oct. 25. Wilkins posted a picture of herself with Patel at the event to her personal Instagram account on Sunday, Oct. 26, and Patel reposted the photo to his X account.
Publicly available flight logs for Patel’s plane, N708JH, show that the plane landed in State College in time for the event, then took off for Nashville the same night, leaving the following morning. Nashville is Wilkins’ hometown.
The flight attracted criticism and mockery for the beleaguered FBI director, causing Williamson to take up the shield for his boss.
Williamson posted that Patel is a “required use traveler,” meaning he is “mandated by Congress to travel on a government plane even on personal travel.”
This is, however, not fully accurate. It is executive branch policy for FBI directors to fly on a government plane. They do this to ensure secure communications on flights. It is not mandated by Congress.
Williamson then went on to try to downplay how much Patel is costing American taxpayers with the multiple flights he appears to have taken Wilkins on.
He claimed that “the Director pays a reimbursement in advance - strictly following OMB (Office of Management and Budget) rules.” Williamson also claimed that, when possible, Patel chooses to use government airports to land at, as these are significantly cheaper than standard airports.
Assuming these assertions are true, they don’t tell the full story. FBI directors are required to pay the price only of a commercial airline ticket for their personal travel. In the case of a flight from State College to Nashville, that would run about $239, according to estimates from Expedia.
However, FBI directors aren’t on the hook for the other costs associated with a flight, such as jet fuel and landing fees. Those fees, which can total tens of thousands of dollars, fall on taxpayers. Furthermore, the airports Patel appears to have used on his weekend getaway, State College Regional Airport and Nashville International, are not government airports, so would have attracted landing fees.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI for comment.
Before he was FBI director, Patel furiously complained about FBI directors wasting taxpayer dollars with personal flights. For example, in a 2022 Truth Social post, Kash dubbed former FBI director Chris Wray “#GovernmentGangster” and criticized him for “jetting off out on tax payer dollars while dodging accountability for the implosion of the FBI on his watch.” Josh Hawley grilled former FBI director Chris Wray on this point in a 2022 hearing.
Hawley brought up that point in the 2022 hearing because he was tipped off by podcaster and FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin, who is also the person who first raised an issue with Patel’s weekend getaway.
On Monday’s episode of The Kyle Seraphin Show, Seraphin complained that Patel was wasting taxpayer money to go on his date. He also claimed it was a particularly bad look for Patel to fly his girlfriend around the country while Americans, including some FBI agents and air traffic controllers, are going without pay on account of the government shutdown.
In a comment to the Daily Beast, Seraphin said, “The only reason the FBI AD of Public Affairs commented is because Kash blew it and he and his girlfriend can’t help being on social media.”
“This morning on my podcast I revealed my source: @Kash_Patel on X reposted his girlfriend’s story and her Instagram account put them in State College. I regularly track the public info on the jet and I have since at least Nov 2022 when I made whistleblower disclosures to Sen Hawley’s office,” he said.
Seraphin has drawn the ire of Kash Patel and Wilkins before. In August, Wilkins sued Seraphin for $5 million for defamation after Seraphin suggested that the singer was a “Mossad agent” sent by Israel to compromise Patel. Wilkins strongly denied the accusation.
Seraphin worked for the FBI from 2016 to 2022. Ironically, he was booted from the Bureau after clashing with brass because he was against their COVID vaccination policies.
