President Donald Trump “laughed” at a “totally false” MS NOW report that he was considering firing FBI Director Kash Patel, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. Leavitt, in a post on X, said the story was “completely made up.”
She said she was in the Oval Office with both Trump and Patel when the report was published on Tuesday, prompting Trump to take a quick picture standing alongside the FBI director. Leavitt posted the photo, with both men smiling and giving Trump’s trademark thumbs-up gesture.
“What? That’s totally false. Come on, Kash, let’s take a picture to show them you’re doing a great job!” Trump said, according to Leavitt.
The White House response came an hour after MS NOW reported Trump was “considering removing Kash Patel as FBI director in the coming months, as he and his top aides have grown increasingly frustrated by the unflattering headlines Patel has recently generated.”
The MS NOW report cited “three people with knowledge of the situation.”
One of the authors of the story, justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian, stood by the reporting during an appearance on MS NOW following Leavitt’s post.
“I said in the last hour that we may have enhanced Kash Patel’s job security by reporting this story. And that seems to be playing out. But there’s another factor. I also got some texts from FBI sources after the story was published, saying you’re spot on… it’s anybody’s guess how this is all going to play out, but it is absolutely our reporting that, of course, Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, but also the White House and Donald Trump have grown annoyed with the bad press that Patel has been racking up,” Dilanian said.
One headline Trump disliked, according to MS NOW’s initial report, was a story claiming Patel used a government jet to watch his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, perform.
Patel called that report “fake news” earlier this month.
Dilanian, during an earlier appearance Tuesday with anchor Katy Tur, laid out what MS NOW says it has been told by its sources.
“Well, Katy, I should say, first of all, all the qualifiers apply here. With Donald Trump and personnel decisions, you never actually know exactly what’s going on. But we are being told that Kash Patel, the FBI director, is on increasingly thin ice, and the president is considering replacing him by the end of the year with Andrew Bailey, the former attorney general of Missouri, who is acting now as co-deputy FBI director along with Dan Bongino,” he said.
Dilanian added that Trump was upset by “premature tweets” Patel sent related to the investigation into the murder of Charlie Kirk.
In October, Patel announced that the bureau is “following the money” behind Antifa and other far-left militant groups, launching an unprecedented financial investigation aimed at dismantling every donor network, funding mechanism, and organizational link supporting domestic extremism.
“We are following the money. Money never lies,” Patel said during a briefing alongside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “And that’s what it’s going to take to bring down this network of organized criminal thugs, gang bangers, and yes, domestic terrorists — because that’s what they are.”
Patel said the FBI is working closely with the Treasury Department to map out the web of accounts and entities used to finance Antifa’s operations across the United States and abroad.
“We will not rest until we uncover every single source of funding, donor, organization, and financial support that exists,” he added.
According to Patel, the effort will span every major city in the country. “They will not be able to hide. They were able to hide and conspire with prior administrations, and we are exposing their corruption from within,” he said.