Agents with the FBI’s elite evidence response team were delayed in reaching the scene of a mass shooting at Brown University in December because there was no FBI plane available to take them to Rhode Island, according to three sources and a whistleblower’s account newly provided to Congress.
FBI Director Kash Patel was in south Florida at the time with one of the FBI’s two available jets and had given an order to hold the other for another team that would not normally respond to the scene, according to the whistleblower and the sources. The evidence response team instead had to drive through the night amid a snowstorm to reach the university in Providence, Rhode Island, by 9 o’clock the next morning, according to the whistleblower’s account.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, obtained the whistleblower’s account. In a letter sent Tuesday to the Government Accountability Office and the Justice Department’s inspector general, Durbin accused Patel of harming the FBI’s critical investigations due to his misuse of FBI resources and aircraft and his inexperience.
“The Director’s misplaced priorities and poor management of the FBI’s resources — including its aircraft — also harmed the FBI’s ability to respond to the shooting at Brown University on December 13, 2025,” Durbin wrote.
Patel had been flown in one of the FBI’s two jets to south Florida and was there on Dec. 13, the day of the shooting, and didn’t fly back until the afternoon of Dec. 14, according to sources who spoke to MS NOW confidentially in order to speak candidly and avoid potential retribution.
According to the whistleblower’s account, Patel ordered that the Hostage Rescue Team be put on standby after learning of the shooting, which froze the use of the second plane by any other FBI team. FBI officials were confused by his order as numerous SWAT team agents in the nearest local field offices — in this case, Boston and New York — would ordinarily be called upon to provide immediate support, rather than the Quantico, Virginia-based Hostage Rescue Team.
FBI spokesman Ben Williamson disputed the whistleblower’s account, saying that evidence response agents in the FBI’s Boston field office were on the scene roughly two hours after a shooter opened fire at roughly 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
“This was not immediately a case with federal nexus,” Williamson added, explaining the FBI did not initially take the lead in the case. “It was a state-led homicide investigation. FBI was in an assisting role until later.”
He added that the director’s jet travel to Florida didn’t harm the mission because sending a plane to Rhode Island wasn’t necessary.
“If the Director happens to be out of town, he always offers the plane if needed anyway — and did so here,” Williamson said. “It wasn’t needed.”
In the Dec. 13 shooting, a former Brown graduate student, Cláudio Manuel Neves Valente, entered a university classroom building, then killed two students and wounded nine others before fleeing the scene. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and former classmate of Valente’s was later shot and killed. After a five-day manhunt, police found Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a storage unit.
The FBI’s evidence response teams are known for specialized skills in mapping out a crime scene and collecting forensic evidence, and often use technical gear to help in gathering latent fingerprints and photographic clues. Agents who specialize in evidence collection are based in FBI field offices around the country, but specialists based in the Quantico unit that oversees evidence review and crime scene reconstruction are some of its most experienced veterans and often deploy in the case of a major crime scene or mass shooting.
An FBI official familiar with Patel’s travel said he was using the jet that December weekend to visit his elderly parents, but declined to say where the parents lived due to security concerns. Property databases reviewed by MS NOW indicate Patel’s parents reside in south Florida.
According to Durbin — and multiple sources who spoke to MS NOW — Patel’s frequent use of the plane for ostensibly personal travel has left the FBI struggling to deploy for emergency assignments when teams need access to a government plane quickly.
Durbin wrote that his letter served as a follow-up to one he sent in May requesting that the GAO conduct a comprehensive review of the Justice Department’s use of government-controlled aircraft by senior executives.
“Since his confirmation as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel has seemingly engaged in what amounts to irresponsible joyriding on DOJ and FBI-operated aircraft at the expense of the American taxpayer and to the detriment of ongoing Bureau operations,” the senator wrote.
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Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for MS NOW.
