July 16, 2026, Washington, District Of Columbia, USA: Kash Patel, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) holds a place card with his name on it as he attends US President Donald J Trumpâs address the nation from in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, July 16, 2026 (Credit Image: © Saul Loeb – Pool Via Cnp/CNP via ZUMA Press Wire)Saul Loeb/Pool/CNP/Zuma
FBI Director Kash Patel seems to be very bad at his job.
This was confirmed yet again on Thursday, when national security journalist Seth Hettena found documents showing Patel instructing his team to search for and respond to online accounts that criticize him. In one instance, Ben Williamson, the FBI’s assistant director for public affairs, tells Patel via text message that the FBI should not respond to a post making fun of the director from what looks like a troll account on X with a handle referencing the r-word slur.
Patel texted a link of the post to Williamson in February, to which Williamson replies, “this is an ‘Epstein didn’t kill himself’ bot account if you’re wondering where that’s coming from.” But Patel seems to fixate on the reaction to the post: “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 records appear in the FBI Vault, a large set of documentation that the FBI proactively released for public interest in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. The documents that Hettena highlights are from a collection titled “Records regarding the review of the Investigative Holdings related to Jeffrey Epstein Part 11.”
Williamson dismissed his director’s concern over the February troll post—as of Friday morning, it only has 492 comments, about 1,000 reposts and quotes, and 16,000 likes—with Patel appearing to confuse the number of views with the number of responses. He warned Patel that responding to the post would “look bad on you”—a valid point.
This behavior aligns with Patel’s excessive drinking and extended unexplained absences from his post, according to an April report in The Atlantic. The FBI director filed a defamation lawsuit against the media outlet, a case that remains pending following The Atlantic’s motion to dismiss in July.