When I first saw the video Sunday of frequent podcast guest and noted hockey enthusiast Kash Patel (who moonlights as the director of the FBI) guzzling beer in the locker room of the United States men’s national hockey team to celebrate America’s gold medal win in Milan, I immediately thought of Jeff Neely.
Even political junkies from the Obama era will likely have forgotten that name. Perhaps more memorable is the image of a bare-chested and grinning Neely, sitting in a hotel room tub with two glasses of red wine perched on a tray and a high-rise view of Las Vegas out the window behind him. At the time the photo was taken in 2009, Neely was a regional commissioner and the acting regional administrator at the General Services Administration, the executive-branch agency that provides support products and services to every other federal department and agency. He and his wife, who was not a GSA employee, were enjoying this suite at the M Resort Spa Casino during a work trip to plan an upcoming conference.
The actual conference in 2010 was so expensive and elaborate that it prompted an internal watchdog investigation. Neely’s sumptuous soak was only one of dozens of outrageous expenses documented by the internal report and highlighted by Republicans in Congress after it was published in 2012. There were violations of the GSA’s contracting procedures, excessive spending on food (such as $31,000 on a “networking reception” that served expensive tiny sandwiches and 1,000 sushi rolls, at a total cost of well over $100 per person), questionable giveaways to conference attendees like commemorative coins, and over-the-top talent shows that went far afield of the business purpose of the conference.
That probe led to the resignation of the GSA administrator, multiple firings, and even a prison sentence for Neely, who pleaded guilty to making a false claim to the government for his reimbursement. And the embarrassing photo of a senior official from a backwater agency luxuriating on the taxpayers’ dime became a symbol of the excesses of the federal bureaucracy.
The jury’s still out, so to speak, on whether any such scrutiny or consequences will face Patel and other Trump administration officials who regularly stretch ethical or prudential boundaries when it comes to using federal resources for private ends. But the list of examples is long and growing longer.
Patel’s Italy trip is only the latest instance that raises questions about his blending of the professional and the personal. The official purpose for last week’s transatlantic jaunt is a little unclear. Patel was not a member of Team USA’s official government delegation to either the Olympics opening ceremony (led by Vice President J.D. Vance) in Milan two weeks ago nor to Sunday night’s closing ceremony (led by Education Secretary Linda McMahon). As his spokesman Ben Williamson has posted on social media, Patel had multiple public events and documented meetings, including a visit to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, a meeting with Italian national police officials, and a stop at the joint operations center in Milan where American law enforcement was helping provide security for the Olympics.
Yet it certainly seems that Patel, an amateur hockey player in his youth and a superfan of the sport, also traveled to Italy at taxpayer expense in order to watch Team USA’s gold-medal matchup against archrival Canada. In a video posted on social media, supplemented by photos he himself later posted on his personal account, Patel can be seen in the locker room after the 2-1 victory Sunday. The video shows him drinking beer, pounding a table in excitement, and singing a Toby Keith song with the team. At one point, a player places a gold medal around Patel’s neck.
This sort of indulgence by an elected official might be merely notable if it didn’t appear to be part of a pattern of Patel blurring the lines between FBI business and his private life. During last year’s government shutdown in October, for instance, an FBI plane carted Patel around on multiple personal trips, the Wall Street Journal first reported. He first flew to a wrestling event in Pennsylvania where his girlfriend, country music singer Alexis Wilkins, performed the national anthem. The next day, the plane traveled from Pennsylvania to Nashville, where Wilkins lives, before eventually flying to Texas, where Patel visited a hunting ranch owned by a Republican donor.
And a report from MS NOW in December alleged that FBI security detail assigned to protect Wilkins (already an abnormal use of resources) had been directed to drive “inebriated friends home after a night of partying” in Nashville. Williamson, the FBI spokesman, said those events were “made up and did not happen.”
Trump’s first term was rocked by relatively minor scandals of this sort. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price drew scrutiny for his frequent chartering of private jets for official government travel, and Scott Pruitt, Trump’s first Environmental Protection Agency administrator, faced criticism for his use of private jets and first-class travel, excessive spending on his office, abusing his security detail to break traffic laws, and several instances of favor-seeking for friends and family. Both Price and Pruitt eventually resigned their positions thanks in large part to the negative attention these scandals received from not only the media but from congressional Republicans.
The second Trump administration is different—not only for the brazenness with which many of its officials seemingly act without concern for even appearances of propriety but also for the lack of interest by congressional Republicans. Consider the string of controversies and problematic stories surrounding Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, from the petty (temporarily firing a pilot for not transferring a preferred blanket to a separate plane) to the more serious (plans for the department to acquire a luxury jet for the secretary’s official travel.)
Or how about Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer? She is being investigated by the department’s inspector general for misconduct involving a possible romantic relationship with a member of her security detail and abuse of her office. There are allegations Chavez-DeRemer’s staff was forced to “make up” official trips for the secretary to take so that she can visit family and friends, including multiple trips to—you guessed it—Las Vegas.
The GSA scandal is hardly the best analogy to Patel’s penchant for mixing business and pleasure. In fact, one of his predecessors in the job, William Sessions, faced an internal ethics investigation into his own use of an FBI plane for personal trips, with officials in both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations admonishing him for poor judgment. Clinton eventually fired Sessions after he refused to resign.
If anyone is expecting Trump to make a similar judgment that Patel’s unprofessional use of his official position to augment his personal life is a fireable offense, don’t count on it. After all, when the president made his postgame call to the American hockey team to congratulate the players, it was Patel himself holding the phone.
