The FBI launched an investigation last month into New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson after she published a story saying FBI Director Kash Patel had assigned federal agents to provide round-the-clock security and personal transportation to his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins. The probe was later shut down by Justice Department officials, who concluded there was no legal basis for it and that it was retaliation for a story Patel did not like.
Agents interviewed Wilkins and queried databases for information on Williamson, then recommended moving forward to determine whether the reporter had broken federal stalking laws, according to. The episode put Patel, who is separately suing The Atlantic for $250 million over an article that said he has abused alcohol, back in the middle of a fight over how far federal power can reach when a senior official takes offense at coverage of his private life.
That makes Wednesday’s response from Patel at the Justice Department harder to separate from the record already building around him. Asked about The Atlantic’s reporting, he said: “I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake news mafia, and as when they get louder, it just means I’m doing my job.”
The investigation followed the Times article about Patel’s arrangement for Wilkins, which turned a personal relationship into a matter of federal scrutiny. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Houston dismissed a lawsuit Patel had filed against former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi, who had joked on MS NOW that Patel spent more time in nightclubs than at the bureau’s headquarters.
The sequence leaves Patel facing two separate fronts at once: a collapsed federal inquiry that Justice Department officials now reportedly view as retaliatory, and a legal campaign against a magazine and a former official that keeps drawing attention back to the same question he is trying to swat away. The immediate result is that the story about his girlfriend has become bigger than the original article, and the explanation for why the FBI looked at a reporter now matters more than the claim that set it off.
