MSNBC Lists All the Times FBI Boss Kash Patel Trashed Predecessor Chris Wray’s Use of Private Jets

MSNBC journalist Antonia Hilton pulled together a compilation of all the times FBI Director Kash Patel trashed his predecessor Chris Wray’s personal use of “government-funded” private jets, long before being accused of doing the same in a scandal currently brewing against him.

Last week, Patel travelled to Pennsylvania State University, where his 26-year-old girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, sang at the Real American Freestyle wrestling event. Flight logs appear to show a short hop from Virginia on October 25, followed by a departure to Nashville. The reports prompted bipartisan backlash against Patel in recent days.

On MSNBC’s The Weekend on Sunday, however, Hilton paused analysis to run a flashback compilation of clips of Patel savaging Wray.

“Chris Wray doesn’t need a government-funded G-5 jet to go to vacation. Maybe we ground that plane – $15,000 every time it takes off,” he said on The Glenn Beck Podcast in late 2024. “Just a thought.”

In September 2023, he told Steve Bannon’s War Room: “Go take their money. Chris Wray doesn’t need a private jet.”

“We’re not the guys running around on private jets and somebody maybe in Congress should ask for how many flights on a private jet Director [James] Comey took, or my predecessor, Director Wray took, and how many personal trips they took,” Patel told Fox News in an exclusive May 2025 sit-down.

As the MSNBC panelists laughed, host Ayman Mohyeldin mocked: “There’s always a soundbite. There’s always a tweet with the Republicans, especially the Trump administration. There’s always an element of projection when it comes to them.”

The show came just hours after Patel unloaded on his critics via X on Sunday, slamming “the disgustingly baseless attacks” against his girlfriend, who he called a “country music sensation” and “rock-solid conservative.”

Anger inside the bureau appears to be spreading. Bloomberg Law reported Patel was so enraged by the coverage, he ousted a senior FBI aviation official after nearly three decades of service. Patel has not addressed that claim.

Patel’s trip was first flagged by Kyle Seraphin, a conservative former FBI agent now hosting an FBI-focused podcast, who slammed the optics as especially galling.

“We’re in the middle of a government shutdown where they’re not even gonna pay all of the employees that work for the agency that this guy heads,” Seraphin said on his Monday episode of The Kyle Seraphin Show. “And this guy is jetting off to hang out with his girlfriend in Nashville on our dime?”

Watch above via MSNBC.

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