FBI planes, taxpayer dollars: Why director Kash Patel’s journey bears scrutiny

Kash Patel’s trip to Milan to coincide with the end of the Winter Olympics highlights the taxpayer-funded trips of FBI directors, a practice Patel bitterly criticized before he took office.

Patel’s use of the FBI Gulfstream G550 to Italy became public knowledge last week, and the director was far from discreet in his duties after landing.

Videos from the dressing room Sunday after the U.S. men’s hockey team defeated Canada in the gold medal final showed an emaciated Patel, a hockey fan, drinking beer from a bottle and spraying others near the players.

Kendall Witner, the immediate response director of the Democratic National Committee, said Patel “is happy to use the American people as a blank check to go party and get drunk in Italy or visit his girlfriend while the American people every day tighten their wallets to succeed in Donald Trump’s economy.”

The FBI spokesperson, Ben Williamson, said on social media that this trip was not for you, it was planned months ago, it will involve meetings with different officials and it is in line with the “big role” of the FBI in the security of the Olympics.

Patel himself responded on social media late Monday.

“To the media who are very concerned – yes, I love America and I was very humbled when my friends, who just won a gold medal for Team USA, invited me to the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys. The greatest country in the world and the greatest sport in the world,” he said.

The White House signaled its support for Patel, with communications director Steven Cheung writing to X that “Kash was in Italy and meeting with regional partners and security groups.”

‘Necessary use’ is a stranger

The departure of the FBI director, and the discretion they have in planning their program, became an issue that came to the fore when William Sessions was fired for six of a 10-year term during Bill Clinton’s first term as president.

Times was fired after a scathing ethics report in 1993 questioned a number of expenses he had incurred on his home, as well as limousines and plane trips.

In response to the report, former attorney general William Barr – who decades later would serve in the same position in the Trump administration – said in a letter to Sessions that it was clear that the director had arranged “frivolous” activities with officials or businessmen in several cities to justify personal travel.

“Among other things, it appears that you and your wife used an FBI plane to take a personal trip and wanted to pass the trip off as ‘legal’ to avoid paying the government back,” Barr wrote.

The attorney general noted the 111 times the FBI director traveled on a government-issued plane. It wasn’t a hockey trip on taxpayer money that caught the media’s attention but a Bolshoi ballet performance in Atlantic City, NJ.

Both the FBI director and the attorney general are among the US officials who are considered “necessary use” foreigners. They use government aircraft for their trips – including personal reasons or “non-business” flights that do not involve meetings, conferences or visits to field offices – due to security concerns and the need for access to communications from management.

If these high-ranking officials use the plane for personal reasons, they are expected to reimburse the government – albeit at the rate of commercial travel for those areas in question.

The Government Accountability Office in 2013 investigated the use of airplanes by two attorneys general and FBI director Robert Mueller between 2007 and 2011. Some 697 flights were impounded, with 38 considered non-transport, at a cost to taxpayers of $11.4 million US, or $16,355 per flight.

In November, the FBI’s Williamson told the Associated Press that Patel regularly reimbursed the government.

“He works a lot more weekends than he does. And perhaps most importantly – ask anyone who works for him, he’s on the job 24/7 regardless.”

Until 2011, the FBI director could fly commercial, but the White House issued an order to eliminate the option, and it has not been changed since then.

Patel is a previous critic of the FBI expedition

It’s difficult to gauge what would constitute air travel abuse. The directors may have residences in different places – Mueller and James Comey live near DC, Christopher Wray in Atlanta and Patel in Las Vegas.

Also, directors may place a different priority on personal travel to meetings, while the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted Wray’s air travel.

As for Comey, the most controversial flight story involved a power struggle when he was fired.

Comey learned on May 9, 2017, of his firing by Trump while speaking to staff at the agency in Los Angeles, and according to multiple accounts and a letter written later by Andrew McCabe, who was his second in command at the time, the White House wanted Comey to plan his way home on a commercial flight. McCabe, citing security concerns, ordered the use of the FBI plane that brought Comey to California to bring him back.

Patel has more than once criticized Wray while outside the government and is a frequent guest on conservative media podcasts and cable news outlets.

“Chris Wray doesn’t need a government-sponsored G-5 plane to go on vacation. Maybe we can stop that plane – $15,000 every time it takes off. Just a thought,” he said as he left. Glenn Beck’s show in 2024.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri also appeared to criticize Wray’s use of the FBI’s plane, after the director cut short a hearing committee appearance and went to a vacation home in New York state.

There is no known record of Hawley criticizing Patel’s use of the plane from 2025, but Democrats have taken note.

“You used a $60 million US government jet for a night out with your girlfriend, a golf trip to Scotland with your friends, and a trip to a fancy hunting lodge called Boondoggle Ranch,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland wrote to Patel in December, when House Democrats launched an investigation into the director’s travel.

It is known that Patel attended a wrestling event in October in Pennsylvania where his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, sang the national anthem.

Patel’s trip to Italy brought the agency busy in many areas. The FBI was called in to investigate after a man was shot at the gate of Trump’s Florida estate on Sunday, and the agency is helping in the mysterious disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the children’s mother. Today Show hosted by Savannah Guthrie.

Patel’s FBI also voiced its role in helping fight Mexican drug cartels, an issue that has been in the spotlight since Friday, when authorities received information about the wanted head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which led to the operation that killed the leader and led to deadly attacks across Mexico.

Patel is not the only Trump administration official to face questions about his use of government resources. Congressional Democrats are also demanding answers from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about her department’s contract to develop aircraft.