By a Political Correspondent
It was supposed to be a moment of patriotic celebration. After the U.S. men’s hockey team secured a dramatic gold medal victory over Canada at the Milan Winter Olympics, FBI Director Kash Patel was in the locker room, doused in champagne and chugging a beer with the players. The video, which went viral, showed a top law enforcement official letting loose in a moment of pure joy .
But just days later, that image of revelry has soured, colliding with a far more sinister cloud hanging over the administration: the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. As Patel faces accusations of turning the FBI’s Milan security mission into a “leisure-packed” vacation, Republican and Democratic critics are increasingly linking his alleged ethical lapses to a broader failure to deliver transparency on Epstein. The result is a compounding political problem that is sticking to President Donald Trump in a way his usual defenses cannot seem to shake.
The “Frat Bro” at the Olympics
The criticism of Patel’s Italy trip was immediate and blistering. Public flight data showed Patel took a government plane from Joint Base Andrews to a U.S. Air Force base in Italy last Thursday . While the FBI insisted the trip was planned months ago to meet with Italian law enforcement and discuss Olympic security, the itinerary that later leaked to the New York Times told a different story .
The schedule revealed a four-day trip where official business appeared to take a backseat. Alongside a handful of meetings, Patel’s agenda included attending multiple U.S. men’s hockey games, private dinners, and—most damningly—a four-and-a-half-hour block simply labeled “personal time” .
“When you send the FBI director to the Olympics, you expect him to be securing the event, not acting like a fan with an all-access pass,” said a former Justice Department official. The image of Patel celebrating in the locker room was juxtaposed with serious events back home: the Department of Justice had just issued a shelter-in-place warning for Americans in parts of Mexico due to cartel violence, and the FBI is actively searching for the missing mother of NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie .
The backlash was swift. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) posted on X, “The grift & corruption is unreal. Your taxpayer dollars funding the FBI Director’s Italian vacation” . Xochitl Hinojosa, a former Justice Department spokeswoman under President Biden, added, “Our FBI Director thinks he’s a frat bro” .
When pressed, Patel defended himself on social media, writing, “Yes, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room” . An FBI spokesperson stated Patel would reimburse the government for any personal use of resources .
However, the damage was compounded by the FBI’s aggressive response to the leak itself. When Patel’s schedule became public, the FBI called the leak a “criminal act that jeopardizes security,” despite the document being marked “unclassified” and describing events that were already over . The heavy-handed statement did little to quell the narrative that the director was hiding something.
A History of Travel Scrutiny
The Olympics trip did not occur in a vacuum. It is the latest in a series of travel-related controversies for Patel. Just months into his tenure, congressional Democrats began investigating reports that Patel used the FBI’s Gulfstream jet for what appeared to be personal trips. These alleged jaunts reportedly included a flight to Pennsylvania to see his country music star girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, perform, a golfing trip to Scotland, and a visit to a hunting resort in Texas .
The scrutiny is particularly sharp because Patel once criticized his predecessor, Christopher Wray, for using the agency’s jet for personal travel. While FBI directors are banned from flying commercially for security reasons, they are required to reimburse the government for personal legs of a trip at the price of a commercial airline ticket . The question now is whether Patel’s “personal time” in Italy will be properly paid back—and whether it was appropriate to mix such leisure with a high-level security mission.
The Epstein Time Bomb
As damaging as the “vacation” narrative is, it is the Epstein scandal that gives the Olympic story its political teeth. Patel’s trip came at a moment of intense sensitivity regarding the Justice Department’s release of files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
For years, Patel positioned himself as a crusader for transparency. In 2023, while out of government, he appeared on right-wing shows demanding the release of the Epstein “black book,” insisting the files were under the “direct control of the director of the FBI” . Now that he is the director, critics say he has become the very thing he once railed against.
During a contentious September 2025 House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman accused Patel to his face: “You are hiding the Epstein files… You are part of the coverup” . The accusation centers on the administration’s slow and heavily redacted release of documents. While the Trump administration has released millions of pages, critics argue they are largely old news, with key names blacked out.
The most explosive development came in February 2026, when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) publicly called out Patel. Massie pointed to an unredacted FBI document from 2019 that listed Lesley Wexner—the billionaire founder of Victoria‘s Secret—as a co-conspirator in child sex trafficking. This directly contradicted Patel’s sworn September testimony that the FBI had “no credible information… that he trafficked to other individuals” .
“How can the director tell Congress there’s no evidence of other traffickers when the FBI’s own files list a co-conspirator?” Massie asked in a post on X, dubbing Patel “Keystone Kash” for his bungled handling of the case .
Further adding to the intrigue, Patel admitted he had never spoken to President Trump about the Epstein files, despite Trump’s name appearing “all over” them . When pressed by Rep. Eric Swalwell on whether he told Attorney General Pam Bondi that Trump’s name was in the files, Patel’s evasive answer led Swalwell to accuse him of having a “consciousness of guilt” .
Damaging Trump
Collectively, these threads are weaving a narrative that is proving damaging to President Trump.
At the 2026 State of the Union address, the tension was palpable. Democrats brought several of Epstein’s survivors as guests. They wore badges reading, “Stand with survivors. Release the files,” with the word “files” partially redacted—a pointed mockery of the Justice Department’s redactions .
One survivor, Dani Bensky, directly linked the two scandals in a pre-speech press conference: “Why is the FBI director out there partying like a college kid when he should be investigating the vast criminal enterprise?” .
For Trump, who was once friends with Epstein and has tried to dismiss the focus on the files as a Democratic “hoax,” the optics are a nightmare . He spent much of last year trying to dissuade Republicans from voting for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, only to be forced to sign it . Now, his FBI director is being accused of stonewalling on the same issue while seemingly enjoying taxpayer-funded perks.
The White House continues to defend Patel. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson previously stated, “It’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep” . And regarding the birthday note allegedly signed by Trump that featured a drawing of a nude woman—which the White House claims is a forgery—Patel has even agreed to open an investigation into the Epstein estate .
However, the damage may be more about perception than legal jeopardy. To the public, the image of Patel celebrating in Milan while Epstein documents sit partially redacted on a shelf feeds a cynical narrative: the powerful protect their own.
Conclusion
FBI Director Kash Patel now finds himself at the center of a political firestorm. His Olympic trip, replete with hockey games and personal time, has given his detractors a potent symbol of government excess. Simultaneously, the slow trickle of the Epstein files—and apparent contradictions in his testimony—have painted a picture of obfuscation.
For President Trump, the combination is toxic. It undercuts his law-and-order image and hands Democrats a cudgel they are eager to wield. Whether Patel’s actions constitute an “abuse of office” is a question for investigators and historians. But politically, the intersection of champagne-soaked celebrations and redacted co-conspirators is proving to be a powerful and damaging cocktail.