The Atlantic had asked about election investigations. The director offered a free ride to anyone who helps him find the vessel.
WASHINGTON—Responding to a three-page memo of 17 questions about the FBI’s election investigations, Director Kash Patel wrote back that he was “still looking for my gold-plated jet ski in the English Channel,” a vessel the reporter had not asked about, The Atlantic reported on Friday.
Patel went on to say that the magazine knew where the jet ski was, and he offered a free ride to anyone who helped him find it. The Patel jet ski reply addressed none of the 17 questions. Sarah Fitzpatrick, the staff writer who sent them, wrote that she did not understand the response and had never written about, or asked the Bureau about, jet skis or the English Channel.
Where the Patel Jet Ski Reply Came From
Fitzpatrick traced the reference to July 10, when MS NOW published a column about the director’s standing with the president. An illustration that ran with it showed a white jet ski, a set of golf clubs and a private jet. Patel answered on X the same day. “Nah, my jet ski is gold plated….dumbass,” he wrote, HuffPost reported.
The column followed a letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. In May, Grassley wrote to Patel about his use of government aircraft, the Bureau’s purchase of a fleet of BMWs and whether he had reimbursed taxpayers for personal travel. Officials have said he reimbursed the agency. MS NOW was one of three outlets whose White House press passes were revoked last month, as Newswax reported, before a federal judge ordered them restored.
The Atlantic described the column as unrelated to its questions. It summarized the Patel jet ski reply as an answer about election investigations that cited a graphic from another company’s website.
Seventeen Questions, Five Statements
The questions concerned the Bureau’s turn toward election investigations, which the director has said will end in arrests. In April, Patel said on Fox News that the Bureau had all the information it needed about the 2020 election and would be making arrests. “It’s coming and I promise you it’s coming soon,” he told the host Maria Bartiromo, according to Mediaite.
That was more than five months ago. The arrests have not been made, The Atlantic reported, citing interviews with more than 40 current and former officials, FBI employees and members of Congress. Three people said that Patel, told there were no new findings, instructed staff to look again and to look harder. In July, roughly 260 employees were pulled from other work for two weeks to review data from ballots seized in Fulton County, Georgia. The review produced nothing of substance, people familiar with it told the magazine. Two analysts who questioned the process were escorted from the office.
The Bureau’s press office replied with statements from five named officials, who defended the director and said the FBI was united. Many of the statements used nearly identical language, the magazine noted. One of the five, Andrew Bailey, a co-deputy director, announced on Monday that he was stepping down to return to his family in Missouri. His resignation took effect on Friday, the day the article appeared.
A spokesperson added that election-integrity investigations and arrests had risen 500 percent this year. The statement, as the magazine quoted it, gave no starting figure. Last month the Justice Department’s acting deputy attorney general cited one former Utah mail carrier, accused of throwing about 300 ballots into a dumpster, in defense of a Postal Service rule that two federal judges had blocked, Newswax reported. On Thursday night, before the article was published, the FBI posted the 17 questions and its answers on X.
A Question the Director Did Answer
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 15, Patel was asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, whether sending FBI agents to the polls on Election Day would be against the law. “I don’t know that we can’t legally do it,” Patel said, according to ABC News. Federal law bans federal forces from polling places, UPI reported. The midterm elections are on Nov. 3.
A prosecutor on a related case had left five days earlier. Joe diGenova, a longtime ally of the president, resigned on Sept. 10 after five months leading the Justice Department inquiry that the president’s supporters call the grand conspiracy. He had brought no charges. “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” diGenova told the New York Post, according to the Associated Press. He later told the AP that there was plenty of evidence and that it took time to get there.
One Justice Department official told The Atlantic of being informed this summer that the department’s manual, which sets rules for keeping politics out of election matters, was no longer a consideration. The only instruction, the official said, was a Republican win. A department spokesperson said that was not its guidance and never had been. The White House, in its own statement to the magazine, said it does not dictate whom the department investigates or charges. No one, the statement said, is charged because of a headline.
Two Searches Remain Open
The Patel jet ski reply went to a reporter the director is already suing. He filed a $250 million defamation suit against The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick over her April report on his conduct in office. The magazine asked a federal judge in July to dismiss the case, Bloomberg Law reported, and its lawyers described Patel as a frequent defamation filer with five such suits against the media.
At a police academy on Long Island last month, the director thanked the president in his remarks and said he was living the American dream because of him, according to The Atlantic. The FBI has announced neither the arrests nor the recovery of the jet ski.
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