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Kash Patel ‘jumped the gun’ with announcement of UFC plot arrests, sources say 19%
By Carol Leonnig0%
6/16/2026, 7:53:48 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Fundamental Attribution Error, and Recency Bias, with Unattributed Quote as the most egregious example at 32.5% saturation with 274 hits. Analysis detected 1,411 faulty-reasoning hits from 842 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 34.2% and a BS Rank of 19% (16,678 of 20,515 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 81.30% of the article peer group.
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.
The people 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.
The threat to the UFC event became known to the Secret Service and FBI in the last week when a relative of one of the suspects contacted local police in the Cincinnati area, according to two people briefed on the probe, and reported that their 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 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.
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.
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.”
But after roughly 90 minutes, at 7:59 p.m., he posted a follow-up message saying the “subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.”
His scurrying to publicize that authorities had a subject in custody was seen as foolish and premature by senior investigators, and it infuriated President Donald Trump, who privately groused to aides the tweet was premature and inappropriate, according to two sources briefed on the White House discussions.
Days later, facing criticism, Patel defended his action as motivated by a desire to provide transparency in the probe.
“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.”
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.
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