FBI Director Kash Patel sidestepped months of unflattering insider accounts of his leadership in a hearing on Tuesday. Instead, he boasted of the bureau almost doubling its number of arrests under his tenure, and of capturing the world’s “Ten Most Wanted” villains at a record clip.

He sounded a familiar refrain as he seeks to protect his job, dismissing senators’ concerns over media reports about his behavior, and waving a large placard that he said carried statistical proof that his leadership of the world’s premier law enforcement agency has been stellar.

But Patel’s FBI has imposed new policies that inflate these numbers and overstate the bureau’s progress in stemming crime, according to a half dozen law enforcement sources with knowledge of the changes. 

For example, the FBI began counting thousands of arrests of immigrants that occurred when bureau agents accompanied the federal immigration officers who made the arrests as part of surges targeting the Minneapolis area, Memphis and other cities. Such cases are not ones the bureau had previously recorded as a bureau arrest, the people said. 

An MS NOW review of changes in the FBI’s Most Wanted list during Patel’s tenure also found that the FBI manipulated that iconic bureau program to falsely suggest rapid progress; in that time, the bureau quickly added the names of some fugitives just hours or days before agents capture them. 

On Wednesday, FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson disputed that arrests were being counted improperly without providing specifics. 

 “The contentions here seeking to discredit law enforcement are false and just the latest attempt to detract from this FBI’s and this administration’s year of the most prolific reduction in crime in United States history.”

Williamson also said the Most Wanted fugitives captured since January 2025 were collectively on the run for 60 years, and amount to double the number captured during the Biden administration. 

“If the media would like to make light of or discredit capturing some of the most violent and dangerous criminals in the world, then that is certainly a choice,” he said. 

 Williamson and the FBI declined a request for a breakdown of the data supporting Patel’s claims of rising arrests. 

Patel cited internal statistics Tuesday during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing as he dodged Democratic senators’ questions about a litany of media reports on his behavior. The articles recount allegations from agents and others of his excessive drinking, his orders to polygraph dozens of agents to quell media leaks, his frequent travel in a government jet to VIP events and the security detail for his girlfriend. 

“This is what’s happened under my tenure at the FBI and the Trump administration,” Patel began. “Forty-five thousand violent offenders arrested last year, twice as many as 2024.” 

But at Patel’s direction last year, FBI field offices were instructed to count as FBI arrests any suspects detained when FBI personnel were simply present or assisting, including when another federal agency or a local police department made the arrest and led the casework, according to three current and two former law enforcement personnel familiar with the practice. 

That double counting of arrests — by either the local police or another law enforcement agency making the arrest as well as the FBI when it is present — generated dramatic spikes in FBI stats from late 2025 through early 2026, when the FBI ordered that thousands of agents nationwide join teams of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers surging into targeted cities to arrest and deport immigrants, including in Minneapolis and St. Paul. 

The duplicate counting didn’t remove more suspects from the streets, said the three people, who asked to speak confidentially about the policy change for fear of retribution. But it did give Patel a data point he could cite about rising FBI arrests.

FBI headquarters has also pressed field offices since last year to increase the number of arrests FBI agents make in their own cases, one current and another former FBI official said, and to push to make arrests even when agents don’t expect they can win a conviction.

“They are absolutely padding the stats and claiming arrests they would not have claimed [previously],” said one current FBI official. “So comparing 2025 to 2024 is not apples to apples.”

A former FBI official said agents inside the bureau complain frequently about Patel’s “bogus” arrest numbers.

“Kash is definitely engineering things to pad his stats,” the former official said. 

Patel also boasted on Tuesday about steady progress the FBI has made in arresting fugitives who have evaded capture and are listed on the bureau’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. 

“We’ve arrested 8 of the top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives in the world in 14 months,” Patel said. It was a repeat of what he told a Fox News interviewer on April 20: “That’s twice as many as Joe Biden did in four years.”

However, according to reports from current law enforcement officials and an MS NOW review of the Ten Most Wanted list under Patel’s watch, his FBI has accelerated the pace of arrests in part by making several last-minute adds to the list.

Eight fugitives have been captured off the Ten Most Wanted list since President Trump was sworn in last January; two of those were before Patel became director in February. 

Of the six fugitives caught since Patel was sworn, four were seized within a month of the FBI leadership elevating them to the top of the Ten Most Wanted list. Two of those four were grabbed within 24 hours of being added to the list, according to the FBI.

The most striking example is that of Samuel Ramirez Jr., who was wanted on suspicion of killing two women. He was apprehended in Culiacán, Mexico, in March, just one hour and 13 minutes after FBI leadership placed him on the Most Wanted list, according to an FBI news release. The FBI would plan for days in advance of any operation to capture a violent fugitive, according to current and former agents who say this quickie addition was made strictly to improve Patel’s stats.

Another fugitive, KaShawn Nicola Roper, was apprehended in Florida last month. Roper had been charged with second-degree murder for her alleged involvement in a 2020 shooting in Missouri and was arrested less than a day after she was added to the Most Wanted list. 

“They are literally just nominating people they’re about to arrest or that they have solid information on and can affect arrest,” one FBI official told MS NOW. “Gone are the days of nominating the worst of the worst and fugitives that we haven’t been able to find.”

A former FBI official briefed on the Most Wanted list additions under Patel said the close timing of the additions and arrests may be evidence of manipulation.

“There has always been a bit of gaming of the ‘Top 10,’ but it’s a whole new level under this leadership,” the former official said. 

The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list has been a renowned feature of the bureau’s brand almost since its inception 76 years ago. 

Once tacked to post office walls, it now lives online, and officials say it’s an effective way to focus public attention on some of the worst criminals at large. The FBI says it has captured more than 90% of the fugitives placed on the list, often with the help of citizen tips. 

The list has featured all manner of bad actors, from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to serial killer Ted Bundy to Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber. The first entrant, Thomas James Holden, shot his wife and her two brothers. “Slick Willie” Sutton, who said he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is,” was an 11th person added to the FBI’s first list shortly after its inception in 1950. He was arrested two years later after a citizen spotted him on the New York City subway. 

One statistic that Patel did not mention Tuesday is the spike in attrition of FBI personnel in the last year. Instead, Patel said in his testimony that morale at the FBI has “never been better,” drawing dubious looks from Democrats on the panel. 

The FBI employs 13,000 special agents in its workforce of 38,000, and a review of previous workplace satisfaction reports shows that the bureau loses an average of 700 agents each year. Many credit this relatively modest attrition rate of 5% to the fact that most agents tend to spend their career at the bureau, staying until they are eligible to retire. 

But in the past year under Patel, the bureau has lost 2,800 agents, according to internal FBI statistics shared with MS NOW. It’s unclear if that number includes agents fired during Patel’s tenure. Bureau agents are struggling to recruit even a fraction of the replacements needed, according to a person familiar with the internal discussion.

In the tense Senate hearing Tuesday, Patel dismissed as “baseless” media reports of him drinking heavily and dismissing case agents with Iranian expertise just as America began a war with Iran. When Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., asked Patel about reports of his drinking, Patel hit back, accusing the senator of running up a huge bar bill, without providing specifics. 

Van Hollen shook his head, telling Patel his claim proved “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The senator later reposted on X a photograph of the $7,128 bill that Patel brought up in the hearing. Van Hollen said: “You got me, I catered a holiday reception for my staff with campaign — not taxpayer — dollars! Now let’s see your receipts. #ReleaseTheTab”

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., asked Patel about accounts of him handing out bourbon bottles bearing his own name and wasting bureau resources to polygraph his agents. When she said she was “deeply concerned” about his ability to lead the bureau, Patel leaned on his statistics.

“We need somebody at this agency who is focused on solving criminal cases, not passing out branded bourbon or jetting around the globe,” Murray said. “I’ve got to say, if you want to pass out liquor or pop bottles in a locker room, stick to podcasting. Leave law and order to people who really do care about justice and appearances.”

Patel raised his black placard of numbers. 

“This is what real leadership looks like at the FBI,” he said, adding, “Everyone should take a look at this.”

He continued: “If people want to continue the baseless, fraudulent, false personal attacks at me, that’s great. Keep the target on me, as I’ve always said, but the mission has never been better.”

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