Investigation of alleged White House terror plot adds to evidence that Kash Patel is an unqualified, impetuous FBI director who can't play well with others

Of all the loyalist butt sniffers Donald Trump has appointed to government positions, no one sniffs butts quite the way FBI Director Kash Patel does it. In the case of an alleged terror plot against Trump's UFC fight card on the South Lawn of the White House, Patel was in such a rush to claim glory for his inglorious agency that he jeopardized the investigation and got another agency highly pissed at him. We are talking about the United States Secret Service (USSS), and that should matter to Trump because one of the chief duties of the Secret Service is to protect the president and his closest subordinates. That is ironic in this case because a prominent feature of the terror plot was a plan to target Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Republican members of Congress. 

How did all of this play out? MS NOW provides details under the headline "Kash Patel 'jumped the gun' with announcement of UFC plot arrests, sources say; Secret Service officials are angered by the FBI director's early morning social media post that was shared before some suspects were arrested." How significant is this story? The MS NOW byline -- "by Carol Leonnig, Ken Dilanian, Marc Santia and Lisa Rubin -- provides a hint that it is big. The MS NOW reporters write:

Secret Service officials are angered that FBI Director Kash Patel prematurely announced on Tuesday the details of a largely sealed and ongoing criminal investigation into an alleged plot to attack Sunday’s White House UFC event with drones, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Secret Service and FBI agents had been partnered on the investigation into a group of individuals discussing plans for a drone attack at the White House in the last week, and had discussed unsealing the case and making a joint announcement Tuesday afternoon, according to sources.

The problem with Patel’s social media announcement, the sources say, was that the case had been sealed in court and roughly 10 suspects had not yet been arrested and placed in custody at the time Patel shared his post. Sources said Secret Service and FBI officials were surprised by Patel “jumping the gun.”

“We all woke up this morning to see this on Twitter,” said one administration official, who, like others, asked to speak confidentially to discuss sensitive matters.

This is an instance of Kash Patel not playing well with his own teammates. For an agency that handles all manner of sensitive cases, that is not a desirable quality for its director to possess. The MS NOW team reports the case involved coordination between the USSS and the FBI right from the start -- except that Kash Patel could not be counted on to handle his role like a professional:

The threat to the UFC event became known to the Secret Service and FBI in the last week when the mother of one of the suspects contacted local police in the Cincinnati area, according to two people briefed on the probe, and reported that her relative was talking about engaging in a vague plot in Washington.

An advanced threat interdiction team at the Secret Service, with the help of the FBI, began seeking a subpoena for an encrypted Signal chat thread and was able to identify the plot being planned and some of the people discussing using drones and possible snipers to attack the UFC fight event at the White House’s South Lawn.

Authorities then arrested one suspect, 19-year-old Tycen Proper of Danville, Ohio, on June 13 and moved immediately to seal the case so the FBI and Secret Service could continue investigating, identifying and arresting additional suspects. 

Tuesday afternoon, the Justice Department announced the arrests of five men, including Proper, for an “alleged plot to carry out an attack to kill government officials and others” attending the Sunday event, according to a DOJ press release. 

This obviously was a "life and death" matter -- with the use of drones and snipers apparently part of a plan to sow chaos at the event. At stake was the safety of government officials, celebrities in attendance, fight participants, and regular folks who simply wanted to get close to the action. It would have been nice if the FBI director had understood the nature of the investigation. But he was too busy grandstanding to take that into consideration. From the MS NOW report:

Before the UFC event, the Secret Service had dramatically increased its security plans as a precaution and issued an alert to its law enforcement partners to be on the lookout for people with drones in downtown Washington and other identifying information.

Matt Quinn, the Secret Service’s deputy director, appeared to allude to Patel’s premature announcement in a Tuesday news conference but did not use his name and said the Secret Service made a conscious decision not to reveal the existence of the probe prematurely.

“I’ll tell you a phrase I learned early in my career in the New York field office and that’s ‘Don’t choke on your own smoke,’” he said. “I’ll tell you the Secret Service led that investigation from the beginning. I’ll tell you that case is ongoing. In order to maintain the integrity of the investigation and the security plan, we chose not to leak it.”

He said he was choosing not to discuss extensive details of the case because at least some charges remained sealed and ongoing.

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Like his boss, Patel appears to have the emotional maturity of a 3-year-old (with apologies to 3-year-olds). Patel's inability to play well with others has become a pattern. From the NS NOW report:

Patel’s public announcement of the probe fits a trend in which the FBI Director has often rushed to make announcements that credit the FBI with stopping a possible attack or catching a criminal suspect in a high-profile case.  

On Sept. 10, 2025, the day conservative Trump ally Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, Patel rushed to post on X at 6:21 p.m that the FBI had great news: “The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.”

“I stated in that message that we had a subject and that we were going to interview him, and we did, and he was released,” Patel said. “Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not.” 

Patel's impetuous nature was on display again not long after the Kirk shooting:

That same month, the director faced scrutiny and questions about his leadership when he posted photographic evidence from a shooting at a Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.

And in December 2025, Patel prematurely posted news that authorities had a “person of interest” for a shooting at Brown University in custody. He soon had to correct that claim when the individual was released and found to have no ties to the shooting. 

This is the kind of behavior you get when a president persists in nominating unqualified individuals for important positions -- and a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate refuses to take seriously its constitutional duty under the Appointments Clause to vet and confirm nominees. How in the world did Kash Patel get confirmed by the U.S. Senate? That might be one of many questions that grow out of the White House terror-plot case.