Kash Patel Is Under Investigation for Using FBI Jet as Private Uber

Kash Patel is in hot water for joyriding on the FBI’s dime.

Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee on Monday opened an investigation into multiple flights that Patel took last month with a $60 million government jet.

The visits were reportedly to visit his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, who was performing at a wrestling event at Penn State.

The jet owner’s listed address, according to its FAA registration, is the FBI’s national headquarters in Washington. After Penn State, the plane’s flight log indicates it flew to Nashville, where Wilkins lives.

In a letter addressed to Patel, committee Democrats asked the bureau to hand over flight records and communications with recent passengers aboard to inform their investigation.

“You flew there because your girlfriend was performing at a wrestling match on the campus of Pennsylvania State University,” they wrote. “After attending her performance, you used the government’s jet to fly with her home to Nashville the following day. Your ‘date night’ had no apparent connections to your official duties.”

The caucus also accused Patel of using the government plane mere days later to spend time with some friends in Texas.

“Later that weekend, you took the FBI jet to San Angelo, Texas, for four days, where Republican Party mega-donor Bubba Saulsbury hosted you at Boondoggle Ranch—‘a scenic hunting resort’ that touts itself as the ideal place to ‘waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects,’” committee Democrats continued.

But that’s not all: CBS News reported earlier this year that Patel potentially used the FBI’s jets several more times, including a jaunt to Las Vegas and another trip to Nashville, both of which occurred in March.

The entire situation is a bit of a hypocritical development for the former podcaster, who used to regularly chastise government officials for needless spending before joining the Trump administration. He relentlessly hounded the financial behavior of the man who previously filled his shoes—former FBI Director Chris Wray—even arguing in 2023 that the FBI should “ground” Wray’s private jet “that he pays for with taxpayer dollars to hop around the country.”

An immigration judge fired by the Trump administration is suing for discrimination, alleging that the Department of Justice dismissed her because she is a woman and a dual citizen of Lebanon and the United States, and because she previously ran for public office as a Democrat.

Tania Nemer on Monday filed suit in federal court against Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, arguing that despite receiving strong performance reviews, she was discriminated against in her February dismissal, violating the First Amendment to the Constitution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The government’s response is that the executive branch’s constitutional powers override the civil rights law, effectively giving President Trump the right to discriminate as he sees fit and further undermining legal protections for federal workers.

“This is a case in which the President of the United States has asserted a constitutional right to discriminate against federal employees,” Nemer’s lawyer, Nathaniel Zelinsky, wrote in the lawsuit. “If the government prevails in transforming the law, it will eviscerate the professional, non-partisan civil service as we know it.”

Nemer was fired in the middle of her probationary period nearly 10 months ago, when she was summoned from court in a federal building in Cleveland and escorted out by security. Nemer’s supervisor, as well as the chief immigration judge in the building, told her they didn’t know why she was being fired in the middle of her probationary period.

Nemer initially filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March, but the EEOC dismissed Nemer’s complaint, saying that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act conflicts with the president’s ability to remove federal workers in the executive branch.

Nemer asserted in the lawsuit that the Justice Department is using driving offenses from the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as two tax cases she disclosed as part of a background check, as pretexts for her firing. In her lawsuit, Nemer is seeking back pay and reinstatement to the job.

As it happens, the Trump administration has overhauled the EEOC’s office, which is under the purview of the DOJ. It has also declared war on diversity, equity, and inclusion; sought to crack down on legal as well as illegal immigration (Nemer is the daughter of immigrant parents); and gutted the federal workforce. If Nemer wins, those efforts will have officially been rebuked in a federal court. If she loses, Trump’s authoritarian presidency will grow even stronger.

President Donald Trump may want to celebrate a record number of Black Friday sales as a sign of a flourishing economy—but there’s a lot he’s not telling you.

The president shared an article on Truth Social Monday from conservative blog Just the News predicting that the 2025 holiday shopping season, which lasts between November 1 and December 31, would be the “first quarter trillion dollar season online in U.S. history.”

According to Adobe Analytics’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report, U.S. shoppers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, a 9.1 percent increase in online sales from the same day the previous year.

That’s a promising sign for Trump’s economy, right? Wrong.

Rising costs, driven by steadily rising inflation and the president’s disastrous tariffs, prevented retailers from offering better deals and kept discounts flat compared to 2024, Reuters reported. So while consumers spent more money on Black Friday than in previous years, shoppers checked out with far fewer items, according to Salesforce.

But that’s not all. Adobe also reported a significant increase in the use of Buy Now Pay Later, or BNPL, services, a financing option that allows consumers to pay off purchases in installments. The increased prevalence of services that accumulate consumer debt is nothing to celebrate, as it indicates Americans are experiencing mounting financial strain.

Adobe predicted that over the course of the holiday shopping season, American consumers would spend $20.2 billion using BNPL, an 11 percent increase from 2024. Consumers have already spent an estimated $7.5 billion using these services since the beginning of November.

Klarna, a popular BNPL service, announced Monday that sales using its “flexible payments” had increased 45 percent year-over-year between November 1 and Black Friday.

BNPL isn’t just for the holiday season—it’s already spread into routine, everyday spending. One economic survey from April found that 25 percent of Americans were using BNPL to pay for groceries, up from 14 percent in 2024 and 21 percent in 2023.

The choice to pay in installments may come crashing down on consumers’ heads soon. In June, FICO announced it would begin including BNPL loans in credit reports—meaning that a short-term splurge, like indulging in a few Black Friday “sales,” could potentially become a long-term mark on a borrower’s financial record.

The Trump administration is shifting blame for the “kill everybody” order behind a second strike order on an alleged drug boat, killing all survivors, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Commander Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

“In his social media posts, Secretary Hegseth didn’t go into details about that strike, he just said U.S. operations in the area were lawful, and he said that the story and media reports were fabricated,” a reporter said to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at her Monday briefing. “Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?”

“The latter is true, and I have a statement to read for you here,” Leavitt replied before reading off a statement. “With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed, and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

This is the first time the White House is confirming a Washington Post report from Friday detailing an order that could be considered a war crime.

“The critical thing here is that Leavitt is distancing Hegseth from the final act of delivering the ultimate order for the strike that killed the two men in the water,” The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote. “She only acknowledges that Hegseth directed the initial destroying of the boat.”

The timing is impeccable: Republican House and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairs Mike Rogers and Roger Wicker—along with congressional Democrats—are moving to have Bradley in for a classified briefing to clear up exactly what happened.

The U.S. government’s September 2 attack on a boat off the coast of Trinidad, the first of dozens of strikes on what the Trump administration has claimed are drug-trafficking vessels, is drawing increased scrutiny after reports that an immediate, second missile strike was ordered to kill survivors.

ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a Monday briefing whether the Pentagon’s policy had changed, noting that in a subsequent October Caribbean Sea airstrike, survivors were rescued instead of targeted.

“Was there a decision to handle survivors differently after these airstrikes?” Scott asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Leavitt replied.

The answer is chilling, as it doesn’t clear up anything about what policy or legal method governs the airstrikes, which have continued for nearly three months. According to a Washington Post article, which Scott referenced in her question, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made the order to kill everybody in the September airstrike, which the White House denies.

The Trump administration’s legal justifications for striking boats in the waters around Central America have repeatedly been questioned by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, foreign governments, and the United Nations. The Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual prohibits declaring “no quarter” or conducting operations “on the basis that there shall be no survivors.”

As officials admit that they have no idea who is even being killed, the Trump administration continues launching airstrikes with impunity. At the same time, the airstrikes seem to be a precursor for war, with 14 percent of the U.S. Navy fleet already dispatched to the region. Alleged war crimes are becoming the norm in this yet-to-be-declared war.