Newly released FOIA records reveal FBI Director Kash Patel instructed aides to identify social media accounts criticizing him and push back with bureau talking points, raising fresh questions about his priorities atop the nation's top law enforcement agency.
The text exchange, dated February 5, shows Patel messaging the FBI's assistant director for public affairs with a specific directive: find the critics, then flood their feeds with FBI performance statistics. The records surfaced in the latest batch of government documents released as part of the ongoing review of materials tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, The Daily Caller reported.
Patel's own words leave little room for ambiguity. In the exchange, he told the aide directly what he expected.
"What I asked you and your team to do is find them, and post our record year results back at them all, continuously."
The FBI director framed the effort not as personal grievance management but as a visibility strategy, writing that "it's not about them, it is about the number of views, because people see it and need to be seeing our stats." Whether that distinction holds up under scrutiny is another matter. The director of the FBI was telling subordinates to spend time and attention chasing social media posts, and doing it in writing.
The exchange also shows that at least one senior FBI official tried to pump the brakes. The unnamed assistant director for public affairs cautioned Patel that responding to an account called "RetardFinder" would "look bad on you." The aide also flagged another account as an "Epstein didn't kill himself bot account," suggesting the targets Patel wanted to engage were not serious commentators but anonymous provocateurs.
The two also clashed over how much attention the criticism was actually getting. Patel cited "277k responses" as proof that the backlash was real and widespread. His aide pushed back, telling him that figure represented views, not responses.
"That's views, it's 400 responses; a real visible tweet gets 5x that."
So the FBI director was asking his staff to mobilize against posts that, by his own aide's accounting, had drawn roughly 400 replies, a fraction of what a genuinely viral post creates. Patel rejected the aide's framing, insisting that "277k responses are not bots." The internal disagreement over basic metrics only deepens the impression that this was a priority driven by personal frustration, not institutional strategy.
Patel is no stranger to controversy since taking over the bureau. Former FBI veterans have accused him of disclosing sealed case details to raise his own public profile, a pattern his critics say reflects a leader more focused on self-promotion than on the bureau's core mission.
The text exchange was not released as part of an investigation into Patel's conduct. It came out embedded in the government's ongoing release of Epstein-related materials, which have drawn intense public interest. How an internal FBI discussion about social media strategy ended up in that document tranche is not explained in the records.
Journalist Andrew Kaczynski, posting on X under the handle @KFILE, flagged the exchange after it was first spotted by another user, @seth_hettena. Kaczynski wrote: "I can't believe this is real." He summarized the records as showing Patel "directing his team to find accounts critizing him and respond," and noted the aide's warning about the "RetardFinder" account.
The broader Epstein file review has itself been a source of friction. During a September 2025 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana pressed Patel on what the FBI had found. Patel told Kennedy the information available to the bureau was "limited" and that there was "no credible information" indicating Epstein had trafficked women to anyone besides himself. Kennedy noted that Patel had reviewed most of the Epstein files.
That testimony drew skepticism at the time, and the continued release of new document batches, including records like this text exchange that reveal internal FBI dynamics, keeps the pressure on Patel to explain what the bureau knows and how it has handled the review. Questions about Patel's credibility have surfaced in other contexts as well, including disputes with local law enforcement over the accuracy of his public claims.
The Daily Caller reached out to the FBI for comment on the records. The bureau replied that it had no comment.
That silence is notable. The records show the FBI director personally directing a social media response operation, and when a reporter asks about it, the bureau's answer is nothing at all. The same office that Patel ordered to engage aggressively with anonymous critics online had nothing to say to a journalist asking a straightforward question about those orders.
Patel's leadership has drawn scrutiny on multiple fronts. Congressional Democrats have launched probes into FBI bonus payments under his watch, and his involvement in sensitive White House operations, including running a leak-hunting effort alongside senior administration officials, has kept him in the headlines for reasons that have little to do with crime-fighting.
The FOIA records do not show whether the directive was carried out, how many staff hours were spent on the effort, or whether any FBI social media accounts actually posted responses to the critics Patel identified. Those are questions worth answering, and the bureau's refusal to comment means, for now, the text messages speak for themselves.
Americans expect the FBI director to spend his time catching criminals, not chasing tweets. When the person running the nation's premier law enforcement agency is telling staff to hunt down anonymous social media critics, the problem is not the critics.