Two years ago, Kash Patel emerged as a vocal critic of the then director of FBI Christopher Wray for its use of the Fleet of Government Private Aircraft for Personal Travel.

The FBI should “mold Chris Wray’s private jet that pays taxpayers to jump through the country,” Patel said during his “Kash’s Corner” podcast in 2023.

Now, Patel He is the director, and the questions have begun to circulate within the FBI about the degree to which Patel is using government aircraft for his personal trips.

The FBI refused to share Patel’s flight schedule and did not confirm its presence on several flights to destinations where it later appeared. During the first weekend of April, for example, a Boeing 757 owned by the Department of Justice made two round trip flights from Washington to New York.

On Saturday, April 5, the narrow body jet took a 57 -minute flight to Stewart International Airport, a short distance from West Point, where Patel appeared in a charity hockey event organized by the FBI. The next day, the plane returned to the air to the JFK airport, landing only a few hours before Patel resurfaced in cash seats next to the Wayne Gretzky hockey legend and saw Capitals Star Star Star Alex Ovechkin breaks the NHL score record.

The New York Times first reported the use of FBI airplanes by Patel on Sunday.

It is not clear if Patel was on these flights, and if it was, if they were purely personal, related to work or both. But on Monday, the Democratic ranking in the Judicial Committee of the Senate told CBS News in a statement that wants the answer to those questions.

“The Judicial Committee must investigate the apparent misuse of the Patel director of Taxpayers’ dollars,” said the American Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin of Illinois. “The American people expect an FBI director who focuses on the security of the nation, not someone wrapped in the traps of the Center for Care.”

FBI directors are required by the policy of executive braons to use government aircraft for air trips, whether official or personal. That allows them to maintain access to safe communications wherever they travel. And gives the director the ability to move quickly in an emergency.

If the trip is personal, the director must reimburse the government the cost of an air passage from commercial coach. When traveling for personal reasons, the director can bring family or friends, but guests should also be reimbursed to the government. Friends or family can never fly in FBI planes without accompanying the director. It is not clear if Patel He has brought friends or family aboard government aircraft.

But Durbin said the use of the plane still has limits and questioned whether the use of the aircraft was cut against the Trump administration commitment with disarmed Government residues.

The use of Gulfstream airplanes operated by the FBI seems to extend to its frequent trips to Las Vegas, where it has a home, and Nashville, where Patel’s girlfriend lives, who is a field singer. Sources familiar with Patel’s trip confirmed to CBS News that the director was on the plane during several trips captured by Flightradar24, including a weekend DASH to Las Vegas on March 7 and a weekend in Nashville on March 14.

It is not clear if I was on board on February 24, when one of the Gulfstream 5 jets of the FBI flew from Manassas, Virginia, where the plane is located, Nashville, remained on the ground for an hour and 27 minutes before returning to Manassas.

On some occasions, Patel may have traveled for both pleasure and business. An FBI plane flew on March 21 from Washington to Nashville. That day, Patel attended a round table meeting with officials in charge of enforcing state and local law in Tennessee, and also visited the FBI field office in Nashville. The plane returned to Washington later that afternoon. It is not clear if he saw Alexis Wilkins, his girlfriend, while he was there.

In a statement to CBS News, the FBI said that “he does not comment on travel arrangements for security purposes. All ethical guidelines are rigorously followed.”

Some office veterans told CBS News that they have been concerned about the frequent use of government aircraft by FBI executives, causing the plane to be less available to support online operations with the main mission of investigating crimes, pursuing spies and avoiding terrorist attacks.

“These airplanes have been acquired or leased specifically to support operational needs,” said Christopher O’Leary, a former Senior Contribution official of the FBI who has used the dozen airplanes of times for sensitive missions and critical response. “The concern is that the use of their routine by the director and the deputy director for personal trips could disconnect a critical resource when sometimes they are necessary at any time.”

O’Leary and others said they are also worried that the use of airplanes establishes the incorrect tone.

“It’s a bad example of leadership,” he told CBS News. “All agents receive an FBI vehicle, and cannot be used for personal use. They can only be used to go and go to work, for official tasks or to respond to a crisis and that is strictly applied.”

Congress ratio advised trips to personal jet

In 2013, the government responsibility office investigated the use of the Department of Justice and the FBI of the FBI G5 aircraft for “purposes without missions.” The report that continued established how often and for what reasons were used by the Attorney General and the director of the FBI, the costs associated with the flights and rules and regulations that govern them. At that time, the GAO did not find specific instances of irregularities, although it emphasized the importance of officials being the administrators responsible for taxpayers’ funds when using airplanes.

Diana Maurer, director of GAO and author of the 2013 report, told CBS News that the same principles that were at stake when the Congress surveillance agency made its review is still relevant today.

“I don’t know what the current FBI director did, and we haven’t updated our 2013 report,” Mauer said in an interview. “But the fact that you are allowed to do something does not necessarily mean that you should.”

Maurer said government officials should not abuse their privileges at the expense of the taxpayer.

“Use of government aircraft, such as FBI directors must do for safety reasons, costs significantly more than commercial flights. I hope the FBI and the Department of Justice are considering the implications for taxpayers when the director uses government aircraft for non -mission purposes.”

The previous directors of the FBI faced scrutiny

During the years Wray directed the FBI, its personal use of the plane became a touchstone for conservative critics. Wray occasionally flew from Washington to his hometown of Atlanta, where his family kept his residence. He received criticism from the Republicans in Congress and some former FBI agents for summoning the G5 to the Reagan National Airport from Manassas, a 15 -minute flight, instead of being driven 30 miles to Virginia airport, where he maintains a hangar.

FBI Steven Friend’s complainant, a near Patel ally who was suspended by the office for the concerns that his views on the attack of January 6, 2021 against the Capitol affected his work, criticized Wray in more than a dozen publications on social networks for their use of the jets. “Chris Wray abuses his jet @FBI privileges because he doesn’t like to sit in traffic,” Friend wrote on a tweet of December 14, 2023.

Wray was also collected by Republican legislators for shortening a Senate Supervision Hearing in 2023 to fly on an FBI plane to a family vacation in Adirondacks. (Wray at that time pointed out that he had negotiated the duration of the hearing with the committee staff). El presidente del comité, el senador Chuck Grassley, luego cuestionó el uso de Wray de los Jets del FBI y si equivalía a un abuso del dinero del contribuyente, una sugerencia de que Wray rechazó, señaló que era un “viajero de uso requerido, y que reevaluó al gobierno en cada instancia en cada instancia de los planes para los planes para los planes para los planes.

A Grassley spokesman said that the senator “is still waiting for the FBI” records on the use of Wray aircraft and criticized the Democrats and the media, claiming that they never showed “no interest in analyzing the travel records of the FBI directors until Kash Patel arrived on the scene.” The Grassley office did not answer a question about whether the senator would continue his supervision of government travel by the FBI directors, while Patel is a director.

FBI directors have also been sensitive to possible erroneous uses of the FBI fleet. In at least one case, a former FBI director did everything possible to save money to the taxpayer for his air trips.

Shortly after becoming director of the FBI in 2013, James Comey traveled back and forth to Connecticut, where his family still lived. At that time, Washington was in the middle of a heated budget battle with the possibility that government workers were suspended and retain their payment checks. Then, according to two former officials responsible for enforcing the law, Comey asked President Barack Obama for a special dispensation of the “required use” rule to be able to fly at a much lower cost for the government.