Kash Patel Refuses to Say Who Paid for Him and His Girlfriend to See George Strait Concert from Private Luxury Suite

Photo by Samuel Corum/Sipa USA via AP Images

FBI Director Kash Patel refused to say who paid for a private luxury suite at a country music concert he attended with his girlfriend last year, according to a report by The New York Times about ongoing criticism of Patel’s travels and use of government resources.

Last November, it was reported that Patel’s country singer girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, had been given a security detail made up of elite FBI agents previously assigned to a SWAT team with the FBI field office in Nashville. Patel has defended the security detail for Wilkins as necessary due to threats.

This was an unprecedented move, as it was the first time a romantic partner of a high-ranking FBI official was given a full FBI protection detail while not residing with that official, and it came mere weeks after Patel faced criticism for reportedly using a $60 million FBI jet to travel to Penn State University in October to watch Wilkins perform.

Before he took office, Patel had repeatedly bashed his predecessor, former FBI director Chris Wray, for “running around on private jets,” but he pushed back against the criticism for his travel as “noise from uninformed internet anarchists and the fake news.”

A report Friday by The New York Times dug deeper into some of Patel’s recent travel, noting that “F.B.I. policy requires its directors to use government planes for all air travel, personal as well as professional,” but Patel would have been mandated to reimburse the federal government for his personal travel (at the cost of a coach trip). The FBI has said Patel has complied with the policy.

However, the Times noted, questions have been raised about “side trips” Patel has taken, “including to V.I.P. suites for events, leisure activities or nights out with his girlfriend.”

These outings included a “previously unreported trip” with Wilkins to Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia to see country music legend George Strait, with Chris Stapleton as the opening act. The couple traveled on “a Gulfstream V government jet and were spotted in a private suite” that a source who has booked that suite in the past told the Times costs between $35,000 and $50,000.

An FBI employee “who happened to be at the concert” saw Patel and Wilkins, and three other people “with knowledge of their trip” confirmed it to the Times. The sources also said that the FBI flight crew and security detail “collect[ed] overtime pay, until after 11 p.m.” waiting for the concert to end and the couple to return to the plane and fly back to Virginia.

“Through an F.B.I. spokesman, Mr. Patel declined to respond to questions about who financed the outing for himself and Ms. Wilkins,” the Times reported. “The spokesman, Ben Williamson, added that Ms. Wilkins was “an invited guest” of the performers, whose representatives did not respond to multiple inquiries seeking confirmation.”

The Times article included additional details about the FBI security detail for Wilkins, reporting that Patel had “transferred agents from other field offices to Nashville, where she lives, and assigned four SWAT agents and two SUVs to guard and transport her on personal errands,” and that a former senior official who has hired similar agents for security details estimated the cost for this level of security would be “about $1 million a year, with additional overtime, vehicle and other expenses.”

The Times also followed up on an Associated Press report from Thursday about Patel reportedly taking a “VIP snorkel” trip around the sunken U.S.S. Arizona at the Pearl Harbor memorial, which again drew criticism of the FBI director because the site is viewed as hallowed ground. More than 900 Navy sailors and Marines remain entombed within the wrecked battleship and it is “one of the military’s most sacred sites,” the Times reported, based on information obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request and from a former FBI official.

According to the Times, Patel and “nine other people” who have not yet been publicly identified were escorted by Navy SEALs on two boats to the site, where Patel “swam in the vicinity of the tomb for 30 minutes, according to the Navy,” a very unusual occurrence:

Out of respect for the dead entombed in the wreck of the Arizona, rules bar visitors even from wearing swimwear at the memorial. With some exceptions over the years for dignitaries, the only people allowed in the water around the tomb are military and National Park Service divers interring the remains of the last Arizona survivors in the wreck, or conducting annual maintenance surveys, according to a former Navy officer and a former National Park Service official familiar with restrictions at the site.

“This is a war grave with the same legal status as Arlington National Cemetery,” William M. McBride, a Navy veteran and professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, told the Times, adding that he found it “horrifying.” “Snorkeling around Arizona is as disrespectful as playing kickball on top of the graves at Arlington.”

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