FBI Director Kash Patel strutted into a Senate hearing Tuesday, brandishing a large black placard of statistics and daring his critics to dispute them. But current and former law enforcement officials say those numbers are a sham.
"They are absolutely padding the stats and claiming arrests they would not have claimed [previously]," one current FBI official told MS NOW. "So comparing 2025 to 2024 is not apples to apples."
Patel told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that his bureau had arrested "45,000 violent offenders last year, twice as many as 2024." What he didn't mention: his own FBI quietly rewrote the rules on what counts as an FBI arrest.
At Patel's direction, field offices were instructed to count as FBI arrests any suspects detained when bureau agents were merely present — even when another federal agency or local police department led the case and made the actual arrest. That policy generated massive statistical spikes beginning in late 2025, when thousands of FBI agents were deployed alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in targeted sweeps of cities including Minneapolis and Memphis.
"Kash is definitely engineering things to pad his stats," a former FBI official said flatly. The duplicate counting didn't get any more criminals off the streets. It just gave Patel a number to wave around at Senate hearings.
An MS NOW review of the FBI's storied Ten Most Wanted list found a pattern of last-minute additions — fugitives placed on the list hours or even minutes before their arrest, in what officials say is a deliberate scheme to inflate Patel's capture count.
"They are literally just nominating people they're about to arrest or that they have solid information on and can affect arrest," one FBI official told MS NOW. "Gone are the days of nominating the worst of the worst and fugitives that we haven't been able to find."
In one example, Samuel Ramirez Jr., a murder suspect, was apprehended in Culiacán, Mexico, just one hour and 13 minutes after FBI leadership placed him on the Most Wanted list. Another fugitive, KaShawn Nicola Roper, was arrested in Florida less than 24 hours after being added to the list.
"There has always been a bit of gaming of the 'Top 10,'" a former FBI official acknowledged, "but it's a whole new level under this leadership."
Patel boasted Tuesday that he's nabbed "8 of the top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives in the world in 14 months — that's twice as many as Joe Biden did in four years." He did not explain that four of those six captures under his watch came within a month of the FBI adding the fugitive to the list — and two came within 24 hours.
When Democratic senators pressed Patel on reports of his heavy drinking, his use of a government jet for VIP junkets, his ordering of mass polygraphs of agents to hunt down leakers, and the taxpayer-funded security detail protecting his girlfriend, Patel didn't answer the questions. He held up his placard.
"This is what real leadership looks like at the FBI," he declared.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) wasn't impressed. "We need somebody at this agency who is focused on solving criminal cases, not passing out branded bourbon or jetting around the globe," she said. "If you want to pass out liquor or pop bottles in a locker room, stick to podcasting. Leave law and order to people who really do care about justice and appearances."
Patel shot back at Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MA) over an alleged bar tab — without providing specifics. Van Hollen later reposted a photo of the $7,128 bill on X, noting it was campaign funds spent on catering a holiday reception for his staff. "You got me," Van Hollen wrote. "Now let's see your receipts. #ReleaseTheTab"
Patel conspicuously declined to mention that the bureau has lost 2,800 agents in the past year — four times its normal annual attrition rate. Morale, Patel insisted, "has never been better." Democrats on the panel responded with what reporters described as "dubious looks."
An FBI spokesperson denied the arrest numbers were improper, calling the allegations "false and just the latest attempt to detract from this FBI and this administration's year of the most prolific reduction in crime in United States history." The bureau declined to provide any breakdown of the data backing Patel's claims.