It Sure Looks Like Kash Patel Used the FBI’s Jet to Go on a Date

FBI Director Kash Patel met his girlfriend at Penn State this past weekend to watch a wrestling match—but his travel to the university stadium appears to have been on the American public’s dime.

Patel made the trek to support his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, who performed a song as part of “Real American Freestyle,” a wrestling promotion co-founded earlier this year by the late Hulk Hogan. The federal law enforcement director was definitely there—Wilkins snapped and posted a picture of him.

While there’s nothing particularly controversial about attending a wrestling match, how Patel made his way to the college has become the focus of some unflattering attention. Former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin noted on X that it was a government jet that arrived at and departed from State College Regional Airport, the runway nearest Penn State, on Saturday.

The jet owner’s listed address, according to its FAA registration, is the FBI’s national headquarters in Washington.

After Penn State, the plane flew to Nashville, where Wilkins lives. The jet’s recent flight log pre–Penn State jaunt also matches Patel’s itinerary, paralleling his travel last week between Washington and Philadelphia, reported The Bulwark.

It’s a bit of a hypocritical development for the former podcaster, who used to regularly chastise government officials for needless spending before joining the Trump administration. He relentlessly hounded the man who previously filled his shoes—former FBI Director Chris Wray—even arguing in 2023 that the FBI should “ground” Wray’s private jet “that he pays for with taxpayer dollars to hop around the country.”

Meanwhile, the government has been shut down for more than 28 days. Thousands of federal workers have gone weeks without pay (not FBI agents), Affordable Care Act marketplace credits have lapsed in several states, some 42 million Americans stand to go hungry when SNAP benefits expire on November 1, and Donald Trump is building a $300 million ballroom.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted Wednesday that he doesn’t have “sufficient” evidence that pregnant people’s use of Tylenol can cause autism in their children.

While speaking about President Donald Trump’s controversial TrumpRx program, Kennedy made a crucial clarification about the administration’s recent claims linking autism to Tylenol, the number one drug prescribed to pregnant patients for pain relief and fever reduction.

“The causative association between Tylenol given in pregnancy and perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism, but it is very suggestive,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy’s comment came just one day after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Kenvue, Tylenol’s parent company, alleging that it failed to alert consumers that using its product during pregnancy posed a “significantly increased risk of autism” and ADHD. But that claim isn’t true by Kennedy’s own admission.

Several large studies have found “associations” between substantial use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and higher rates of neurodevelopmental disorders in children, but experts have stressed that these studies are not conclusive. During a Cabinet meeting earlier this month, Kennedy cited a number of studies that allegedly support his suspicions about Tylenol but said the existing evidence was “not proof.”

“We’re doing the studies to make the proof,” he admitted—which made the whole thing sound more like a hunch than anything else.

Speaking on Wednesday, Kennedy suggested that pregnant women should consult with their doctors before taking Tylenol, but generally, the Trump administration hasn’t been quite that diplomatic with its recommendations.

In September, Trump seemed to suggest that all Americans should stop taking acetaminophen (though he could hardly pronounce it), especially pregnant women and young children.

“You’ll take a Tylenol, but it’ll be very sparingly. Can be something that’s very dangerous to the woman’s health, in other words a fever that’s very, very dangerous and ideally a doctor’s decision because I think you shouldn’t take it,” he said.

And as recently as Sunday, Trump was still urging people, “DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

“DON’T GIVE TYLENOL TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON,” the president, who has no medical training, wrote on Truth Social.

Toyota has denied President Trump’s recent claim that the company recently pledged to invest $10 billion in the United States.

Trump bragged about the $10 billion figure at least twice during his trip to Asia this week, visiting an American naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, and meeting with the country’s newly minted right-wing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Tuesday.

“Yesterday I was with Mr. Toyoda in Japan, and he’s just announced he’s gonna spend, uh, they’re gonna spend $10 billion, and they’re gonna build new car plants,” Trump said Tuesday, referring to the company’s CEO, Akio Toyoda. “And they’re gonna build ’em in numerous states, about six or seven different states.”

No such deal has been made, as Toyota made sure to clarify. On Wednesday, company executive Hiroyuki Ueda basically confirmed that Trump was either making it up or mixing it up with a deal from his first term nearly eight years ago.

“During the first Trump administration, I think the figure was roughly around $10 billion, so while we didn’t say the same scale, we did explain that we’ll keep investing and providing employment as before,” Ueda told reporters. “So, probably because of that context, the figure of about $10 billion came up. Therefore, we didn’t specifically say that we’ll invest $10 billion over the next few years.”

It seems that acting U.S. Attorney Bilal “Bill” Essayli couldn’t care less whether he was illegally appointed by President Donald Trump—or maybe he just didn’t read a judge’s order closely enough.   

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright ruled Tuesday night that Essayli had been “unlawfully serving” as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California and was “disqualified” from serving in that role. Essayli was, however, properly appointed as a special attorney and could serve as “First Assistant United States Attorney.”

Essayli took to X soon after to assure his followers that everything would remain the same. 

“For those who didn’t read the entire order, nothing is changing. I continue serving as the top federal prosecutor in the Central District of California. It’s an honor and privilege to serve President Trump and Attorney General Bondi, and I look forward to advancing their agenda for the American People,” he wrote on X, posting a screenshot of the judge’s order. 

Incidentally, the excerpt he shared relayed that he was “never lawfully serving as Acting United States Attorney.”

Journalist Adam Klasfield pointed out the admission on X, adding: “If he’s claiming First Assistant US Attorney is the same thing (it isn’t), he shouldn’t mind identifying himself accurately.”

While the positions are functionally similar, some requests require the signature of the U.S. attorney specifically. 

The Trump administration has attempted to stretch the 120-day limits on interim appointments to avoid embarrassing Senate confirmation votes. Trump’s appointments of Alina Habba in New Jersey and Lindsey Halligan in Virginia have both summoned legal challenges. 

While illegally serving as acting U.S. attorney, Essayli provided cover for the Trump administration’s federal law enforcement crackdown in Los Angeles and pursued dozens of (mostly failed) cases against protesters opposing immigration raids earlier this year. Seabright declined to toss the cases Essayli had been prosecuting because they had been “lawfully signed by other attorneys,” and there was no evidence of due process violations. 

Two Department of Justice prosecutors were put on leave Wednesday for accurately describing January 6 as “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters.”

Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White were prosecuting a separate case involving Capitol insurrectionist Taylor Taranto, who was pardoned by President Trump for his participation in the 2021 riots. Taranto faced separate convictions for being found outside former President Obama’s old home in 2023 with two guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and a machete.

Valdivia and White only briefly mentioned Taranto’s January 6 involvement in their sentencing memorandum:

On January 6, 2021, thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.… Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building. After the riot, Taranto returned to his home in the State of Washington, where he promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.

The two prosecutors were furloughed due to the government shutdown, and told they would be placed on administrative leave when the shutdown ends. They were also locked out of their offices, making them the latest federal employees to be punished for refusing to capitulate to President Trump’s narratives surrounding January 6.

The GOP seems to be allergic to acknowledging that January 6 was as violent, if not more, than any leftist “mob” they’ve spent the last five years fearmongering about. Thousands of people broke into the Capitol building with the intention of harming elected officials so that they could wrongfully install Trump as president. Multiple people died on that day, including rioter Ashley Babbitt, and three officers died in the aftermath.

“If you work for the Trump/Bondi Justice Department and tell the truth, you will be fired,” one X user wrote Wednesday. “Federal judges should take note.”