Newly released government records reveal FBI Director Kash Patel instructed his public affairs team to hunt down social media accounts criticizing him and fire back with bureau statistics, raising questions about how the nation's top law enforcement official spends his time.
The text exchange, dated February 5, surfaced in the latest batch of records the government released as part of its ongoing review of materials related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Daily Caller reported that the messages show Patel communicating directly with the FBI's assistant director for public affairs, pushing the aide to identify critical accounts and respond to each one with the bureau's accomplishment data.
Patel's own words in the exchange leave little room for ambiguity about what he wanted. When the aide suggested that engagement on a post Patel had flagged came from bot accounts, calling one an "'Epstein didn't kill himself bot account'", Patel pushed back and issued a clear instruction.
In the text exchange, Patel wrote:
"277k responses are not bots. What I asked you and your team to do is find them, and post our record year results back at them all, continuously."
The aide countered that the 277,000 figure Patel cited referred to views, not actual responses. The real response count, the aide said, was closer to 400, and "a real visible tweet gets 5x that." Patel did not concede the point. Instead, he framed his directive as a communications strategy, not a personal grievance.
He wrote that "it's not about them, it is about the number of views, because people see it and need to be seeing our stats."
The records also show at least one aide cautioning Patel about the risks of the approach. One staff member warned that responding to an account called "RetardFinder" would "look bad" on the FBI director. The article does not clarify whether this aide was the same person as the assistant director for public affairs or a separate staffer.
Journalist Andrew Kaczynski, who posts under the handle @KFILE on X, flagged the records publicly on September 11, 2026, crediting another user, Seth Hettena, with spotting them first. Kaczynski wrote that he "[couldn't] believe this is real" and summarized the exchange, including the "RetardFinder" warning.
The FBI, when contacted by the Daily Caller for comment, had no comment.
The episode fits a broader pattern of questions about how Patel prioritizes his role atop the bureau. Government emails obtained by AP News separately revealed that Patel took a private "VIP Snorkel" around the sunken USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor during an official government trip to Hawaii, an excursion coordinated by military officials and left out of FBI public disclosures. No former FBI director going back to at least 1993 had previously gone snorkeling at the memorial, a sacred military cemetery and the resting place of more than 1,100 sailors and Marines.
Marine veteran Hack Albertson told AP the site deserved better treatment: "It's like having a bachelor party at a church. It's hallowed ground. It needs to be treated with the solemnity it deserves."
The text exchange surfaced because it was bundled into the government's Epstein-related document release, a detail that connects to Patel's own prior testimony on the subject. In September 2025, Patel appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, pressed him on whether Epstein had trafficked women to anyone other than himself.
Patel told Kennedy there was "no credible information" indicating Epstein had trafficked victims to other individuals and characterized the information available to the FBI as "limited." The FOIA records do not appear to shed further light on that question, but their release put Patel's private communications about his own social media image into the public record alongside the Epstein materials.
The juxtaposition is hard to ignore. Records released as part of a review into one of the most serious sex trafficking cases in modern American history also revealed the FBI director spending time directing staff to chase down anonymous social media critics. Whether Patel's public affairs team actually carried out the directive remains unclear from the released records.
Patel's stated rationale, that the engagement was about getting FBI statistics in front of more eyeballs, is at least internally coherent. Government agencies routinely promote their accomplishments on social media. But the directive went beyond standard communications work. Patel did not ask his team to post accomplishments broadly. He told them to "find" specific accounts criticizing him and respond to "them all, continuously." That is not a press strategy. It is a surveillance-and-response operation aimed at individual critics.
The distinction matters. Leaked FBI documents have already raised serious questions about how the bureau handles sensitive internal communications and whether its leadership directs resources toward priorities that serve the public interest or narrower ones.
Conservatives who championed Patel's appointment expected him to reform an FBI that had lost the trust of millions of Americans. The bureau's credibility problems under previous leadership were real, from the Russia investigation's excesses to the handling of the Hunter Biden laptop. Patel was supposed to be the corrective: a no-nonsense outsider who would refocus the agency on its core mission.
These FOIA records make that narrative harder to sustain. An FBI director who directs staff to monitor and respond to his personal critics on social media is not an FBI director focused on counterterrorism, violent crime, or public corruption. The question is not whether Patel has the right to defend his record, any public official does. The question is whether he is using FBI personnel and FBI time to do it.
Congressional scrutiny of Patel's conduct as FBI director has already extended to questions about travel spending and resource allocation, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pressing for answers.
Several key questions remain unanswered. The full content of the FOIA records beyond the quoted excerpts has not been published. The specific social media platforms and accounts involved, beyond the "Epstein didn't kill himself" bot account and "RetardFinder", are not identified. And the records do not reveal whether FBI public affairs staff actually followed through on Patel's instruction to respond to critics "continuously."
The February 5 directive also raises a basic resource question. The FBI's assistant director for public affairs oversees the bureau's entire external communications operation. Time that office spends tracking down anonymous social media accounts is time not spent on communicating about active threats, ongoing investigations, or public safety.
Government transparency advocates and watchdogs who have used leaked documents to hold federal officials accountable will likely press for the full, unredacted text exchange and any related communications. The released excerpts are damaging enough on their own terms, but what they leave out may matter just as much.
Patel's defenders will argue he was simply trying to get the FBI's record out in front of a hostile media environment. That argument has some surface appeal. But the language of the directive, "find them," "post our record year results back at them all, continuously", describes something more targeted than a public relations campaign.
The FBI's credibility depends on the perception that its leadership directs the bureau's resources toward law enforcement, not personal reputation management. Every hour an FBI public affairs staffer spends tracking anonymous social media critics is an hour not spent on the work taxpayers are paying for.
Americans who wanted a reformed FBI deserved better than an agency director who treats his mentions column like an intelligence briefing.