FBI head Kash Patel defends ‘frat bro’ hijinks with US hockey team in Milan

The FBI director, Kash Patel, has a lot on his plate just now. There’s the shooting death of the armed man who entered Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home; the weeks-old search for missing Nancy Guthrie, mother of Today co-host Savannah Guthrie; not to mention the ongoing furor around the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files.

So eyebrows were raised on Sunday when phone footage emerged of Patel whooping it up with the men’s USA hockey team in Milan after their gold medal victory against Canada at the Winter Olympics.

All this urgent business going on, “and our FBI Director thinks he’s a frat bro?!” was just one of the comments. It came from Xochitl Hinojosa, former head of public affairs at the US justice department.

The phone video – sent by a source to a ProPublica reporter, William Turton, shows – Patel dressed in a white USA hockey shirt, gold medal slung around his neck. He chugs on a bottle and splatters beer spray around the locker room as the team sings Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.

Patel is an avid hockey fan. He flew to Milan on a justice department plane on Thursday on what his spokesperson Ben Williamson insisted was official business.

After CBS News reported that Patel used an FBI jet to attend the Olympic men’s hockey games, Williamson insisted that this was “not a personal trip. Director Patel is on a trip that was planned months ago.”

Patel had a number of official meetings scheduled with Italian law enforcement officials and the US ambassador to Italy, the spokesperson added.

Patel himself waded into the controversy on Sunday evening, when he portrayed himself as a misunderstood party. “I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room,” he wrote on X.

“Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth.”

The rightwing podcast Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent, riposted in the comments: “That’s called ‘Misuse of Official Position.’”

Patel has been dogged by accusations that he mixes work with pleasure since he was sworn in as FBI director in late February 2025. In November, he was embroiled in controversy after he used an FBI jet to travel to Pennsylvania to watch his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, sing the national anthem at a wrestling match.