- In late October 2025, a claim circulated online that FBI Director Kash Patel used a government-owned jet for a “date night” with his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins.
- Kyle Seraphin, a self-described whistleblower and former FBI agent, claimed Patel had flown from Virginia to Pennsylvania on Oct. 25 to see Wilkins perform at a wrestling event before heading to Tennessee, where Wilkins lived. Seraphin backed his claim with flight logs from a U.S. government-owned plane that matched these trips.
- It was unclear at the time of this writing whether Patel was on the plane during the flights in question. The aircraft, which had the tail number N708JH, flew routes that corresponded to Patel’s known travels on Oct. 25, 24 and 23.
- Patel is a “required use” traveler due to his position as FBI director, meaning he must use government-owned aircraft for personal and professional travel. “Required use” travelers reimburse the government for the equivalent coach costs of personal flights they take on government-owned aircraft.Â
- It was unclear at the time of this writing how far these reimbursements went toward covering the actual cost of the flights that the U.S. government incurred.
In October 2025, after country singer Alexis Wilkins, the romantic partner of FBI Director Kash Patel, posted a photo (archived) of the pair at a wrestling event in Pennsylvania, a claim (archived) circulated online that Patel had used a government-owned jet for a “date night” with his girlfriend.
The Facebook page Occupy Democrats wrote, “BREAKING: Kash Patel gets caught red-handed ‘grifting off the American public’ by abusing a $60 million FBI jet and taxpayer money for a wrestling date night with his much younger girlfriend.”
The claim also appeared on X (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and Bluesky (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking whether the claim was true.
The claim appeared to stem (archived) from the X account of Kyle Seraphin, a self-described whistleblower and former FBI agent, who said over email that he had been reporting on FBI aircraft movements since 2022. Seraphin claimed to have located flight records for a plane Patel was on that showed the FBI director flew from Virginia to Pennsylvania and then to Tennessee on Oct. 25. These records matched a U.S. government-owned plane with the tail number N708JH (archived).
Seraphin claimed the flight logs for N708JH on Oct. 25 showed Patel flying to see Wilkins sing at the Real American Freestyle wrestling event in Pennsylvania and then on to Nashville, Tennessee, where Wilkins lived.
It was unclear at the time of this writing whether Patel was on board the Oct. 25 flights. Wilkins’ Instagram post showed Patel was in Pennsylvania on a date and time that correlated with logs for N708JH, and further flight records appeared to correspond to Patel’s previous travel that week.
Snopes reached out to the FBI to ask whether Patel and Wilkins were on the flights in question and await replies to our query. We also submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to see passenger logs from the flights in question, which are records the FBI must keep.
According to the United States Office of Management and Budget and the Government Accountability Office, the congressional auditing watchdog, the FBI director is a “required use” traveler on government-owned aircraft, meaning they must use those aircraft for all travel due to “bona fide communications or security needs of the agency or exceptional scheduling requirements.” “Required use” travelers must reimburse the government the equivalent coach fare for flights taken for personal reasons on government-owned aircraft.
Flights appeared to correspond to Patel’s travel
According to FlightAware, an online flight tracker, logs for the N708JH plane showed it flew from Manassas Regional Airport in Virginia to State College Regional Airport in Pennsylvania on Oct. 25, landing at 5:40 p.m.
According to Wilkins’ Instagram post, she and Patel attended the Real American Freestyle wrestling event at the Bryce Jordan Center in University Park, Pennsylvania, that night. One video (archived) posted on Real American Freestyle’s X account showed Wilkins performed at the event (at 0:13), which was scheduled to start at 7 p.m. The Bryce Jordan Center is a 10-minute drive from State College Regional Airport.
After landing in Pennsylvania, N708JH departed for Nashville International Airport in Tennessee at 8:03 p.m. The plane then took off from Nashville the next morning and flew to San Angelo, Texas, where it remained until Oct. 29.
Other flight records from N708JH also appeared to correspond to Patel’s known travel that week. On Oct. 24, flight logs showed N708JH flew from Manassas Regional Airport to Philadelphia International Airport and back. Patel appeared at a news conference about drug operations in Philadelphia around 2 p.m. that day. N708JH landed in Philadelphia at 1:15 p.m.
On Oct. 23, flight records showed flights from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to La Guardia Airport in New York City, back to Joint Base Andrews and on to Manassas Regional Airport. On that day, Patel spoke at a news conference about sports betting arrests in New York City and, in the afternoon, attended a Homeland Security roundtable with President Donald Trump at the White House. N708JH landed at Manassas Regional Airport at 1:35 p.m. on Oct. 23, about an hour and a half before the roundtable at the White House.
In 2023, Patel criticized then-FBI Director Christopher Wray on Truth Social (archived) for using a “tax payer funded private jet” for a 13-minute flight, posting flight logs for N708JH as evidence. Patel’s post, if correct, was possible evidence that the FBI has a pattern of using that specific plane for the director’s travel.
Sources
6abc Philadelphia. “LIVE: FBI Director Kash Patel Speaks on Kensington Drug Raid.” YouTube, 24 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6qv7C2OD-4.
ABC News. “LIVE: FBI Dir. Kash Patel Holds News Conference in NYC on Sports Criminal Gambling Arrests.” YouTube, 23 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmOln91Argg.
“Circular No. A-126 Revised.” Office of Management and Budget, 22 May 1992, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Circular-a-126.pdf.
Department of Justice: Executives’ Use of Aircraft for Nonmission Purposes. U.S. Government Accountability Office, 26 Feb. 2013, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-235#:~:text=All%20AGs%20and%20FBI%20Directors%20are%20%22required%20use%22%20travelers%20who%20are%20required%20by%20executive%20branch%20policy%20to%20use%20government%20aircraft%20for%20all%20their%20travel%2C%20including%20travel%20for%20personal%20reasons%2C%20because%20of%20security%20and%20communications%20needs.
LiveNOW from FOX. “Trump Roundtable with Bondi, Hegseth, Noem, Patel & Others.” YouTube, 23 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3dRioWoeUs.
“Music, Entertainment, Politics, Country Music | Country Music.” Alexis Wilkins, https://www.alexiswilkins.com. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
“N708JH Flight Tracking and History.” FlightAware, http://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N708JH. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
Real American Freestyle – RAF02. Ticketmaster, https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0200632CE1A44EF4.
