Kash Patel sparked chaos within the FBI after publicly celebrating the prevention of a Halloween terrorist attack before all the suspects had been arrested. The FBI director’s mistake was eerily similar to when he falsely reported on social media that a suspect in Charlie Kirk’s murder was arrested mere hours after the killing occurred at Utah Valley University. The actual suspect in Kirk’s assassination, Tyler Robinson, was not arrested until over 24 hours later. Patel, however, on Halloween morning told his followers on X the following: ‘The FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack,’ before noting that arrests had occurred in Michigan.
There was one major problem with the director’s post – agents had not yet arrested all the suspects involved in the foiled terrorist plot. Local law enforcement were also not aware of the details and no criminal charges had yet been filed, according to a bombshell report by the Wall Street Journal. Court documents and authorities told the WSJ that two friends of the alleged terrorists located in New Jersey and Washington state discovered the plot had been foiled following Patel’s announcement. The pair moved up their plans to leave the country but were apprehended by law enforcement before they could escape.
Justice Department leaders were enraged by the near disaster and reportedly complained directly to the White House regarding Patel’s social media post, claiming the director had disrupted the investigation. Local and state officials were left blindsided by Patel and had to call each other to find what was going on, according to the WSJ. Federal prosecutors are accusing a group of young men based in Michigan of allegedly stocking up on guns and ammunition for a possible ISIS-inspired attack on gay nightclubs across suburban Detroit.
A federal complaint claims the men had spent weeks scoping out potential attack locations, researching similar mass shootings, and practiced shooting together at a gun range. The men were communicating with the two teenagers from New Jersey and Washington who had planned to flee the US to fight for ISIS, according to prosecutors. After learning of the Michigan arrests following Patel’s announcement, the teens accelerated their plans to flee the country by booking flights to Turkey for November 5th.
‘So you know what happened in Dearborn?’ One of the 19-year-old men told a confidential informant in a text message, according to a criminal complaint filed in New Jersey federal court. ‘The feds are gonna be looking for us in a week maybe, so we are leaving today or tomorrow,’ the man added. ‘We’re gonna delete everything off of our phones,” he said. “We need to leave urgently before this gets bigger.’
Despite Patel’s social media disruption, Federal agents were able to quell the situation by arresting the man as he was awaiting his flight to Istanbul at Newark Liberty International Airport. The other teen was arrested later that night at his home in Kent, Washington. Multiple FBI and DOJ spokespeople denied the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Patel.
‘This reporting is flat out false. The Attorney General and I have worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Director Patel every step of the way,’ wrote Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. ‘Any anonymous coward spreading lies to divide this Department insults the men and women of law enforcement who risk their lives to keep this country safe.’
