MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian and former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Michael Feinberg appeared on the news network Thursday to fact check some of FBI Director Kash Patel‘s oft-cited statistics about his tenure running the federal agency, calling them “basically bogus.”
“It was remarkable to hear Kash Patel really lean into these stats, which our sources say are basically bogus,” Dilanian, a Justice and Intelligence correspondent, said Thursday. He went on to note that, according to his sources, Patel’s claim that the FBI arrested twice as many violent felons in 2025 as it did under the Biden administration in 2024 is misleading.
“Patel changed the policy so that the FBI began, in 2025, counting arrests where FBI agents were present but other agencies made the arrest and led the investigation,” Dilanian explained. “These stats do not reflect additional suspects being taken off the streets.” He added that Patel has been similarly “gaming the system” when it comes to the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives list.
“Patel often boasts that they’ve had a much greater success capturing these most wanted fugitives than during previous administrations,” Dilanian noted, adding, “They’ve been placing fugitives on the list that they know are about to be captured. We looked at the numbers. Four out of six of the fugitives captured during Patel’s tenure were captured within a month of being placed on the list, two within a day, one within an hour in Mexico.”
“These stats just don’t add up, and Patel is claiming credit for things that really aren’t real,” the MS NOW correspondent concluded. You can watch the full segment yourself below.
Feinberg, for his part, expressed a lack of surprise over Dilanian’s reporting and poked further holes in Patel’s go-to FBI talking points.
“All they’ve done is enlarge the categories they’re counting and, at the risk of being overly blunt, take credit for things that state and local agencies are doing,” Feinberg said. “The FBI director regularly talks about the lowering of the murder rate nationwide, as if that’s something he’s responsible for.”
“A lot of other former agents can’t understand why nobody has pointed out to him in public that murder, generally speaking, is not a federal crime. The FBI has very little responsibility or impact on the federal murder rate,” Feinberg explained. The former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge added that Patel’s alleged stat padding could have a detrimental impact on the FBI’s reputation.
“Every time Patel gets caught fudging the truth, it diminishes law enforcement’s reputation writ large, and whenever that reputation is diminished, people, witnesses, victims, cooperators, become less likely to help out with investigations and operations,” Feinberg warned. “You’re not going to risk yourself for somebody who you can’t trust to tell the truth.”
