Kash Patel's latest scandal is so outrageous, it may end his FBI career

Last August, in the warm Pacific waters of Pearl Harbor, the Director of the FBI of the United States of America put on a mask and a snorkel and went for a swim. Navy SEALs led the excursion with two boats, while Kash Patel and nine other people were in the water for a thirty-minute sightseeing swim. The Defense Department, in its own internal emails, called it a "VIP Snorkel." Because approximately forty feet below him lay hundreds of American sailors and Marines in their final resting place, where they have been since the morning of December 7, 1941.

Based on the events of 5-16-2026

The Breakdown:

• FBI Director Kash Patel snorkeled directly above the USS Arizona, a war grave with the same legal status as Arlington National Cemetery
• Sailors, officers, and Marines are still entombed inside the wreck after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941
• The Arizona still leaks oil over 80 years later, called the "Black Tears of the Arizona," and the Park Service has chosen not to drain the tanks because doing so would disturb the dead
• Snorkeling and diving are prohibited at the memorial. Visitors are not even allowed to wear swimwear
• The only people normally permitted in the water are National Park Service and Navy divers, or Navy divers placing the urns of Arizona survivors into the wreck
• Not even family members of the men who died aboard the USS Arizona are allowed into that water
• Navy veteran William McBride called it "as disrespectful as playing kickball on top of the graves at Arlington"
• Marine veteran Hack Albertson, one of the few trained to dive on the Arizona: "It's like having a bachelor party at a church"
• The FBI never disclosed Patel's two extra days in Hawaii. It only came out through reporters pulling government emails
• Navy spokesperson claims the Navy "was not able to track down who initiated" the excursion
• How this connects to a long pattern of Patel scandals: taxpayer-funded planes, his girlfriend, allegations of heavy drinking and disappearing from work
• Trump in 2018 calling fallen American soldiers "losers" and "suckers" at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery
• Trump at Arlington on Memorial Day 2017, standing among the graves of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking John Kelly: "I don't get it. What was in it for them?"
• Why this is not a series of unrelated scandals but a worldview
• Thousands marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma today and continued to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery
• They came in response to the Supreme Court's April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
• Kirk Carrington, 75, who was a teenager chased through Selma streets on Bloody Sunday in 1965, was there again today
• Evan Milligan, lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case: "We have to accept that this is the new reality. We don't have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever"

That water is hallowed ground. A military cemetery. To those who have lost a loved one defending our country, those who sacrificed years of time with spouses, parents, children, and siblings, those who still carry the grief of someone who never made it home: you and your loved ones deserve better. Our country deserves better.

*This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

More on my daily Substack at: https://heatherdelaneyreese.substack.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I'm Heather Clainey Reese, and you're listening to Hope for America, where every day I bring you the truth about our politics, our country, and the forces trying to destroy them. Together, we cut through the noise, expose the lies, and stay focused on what really matters, fighting for the survival of our country. A story broke a couple of days ago that we all need to know about. But before I tell you what it is, I want you to take a breath, maybe even sit down for this one, because it is one of the most disturbing and disgusting things to come out of this administration, and that is saying something. Last August, in the warm Pacific waters of Pearl Harbor, the director of the FBI of the United States of America put on a mask and a snorkel and went for a swim. Navy SEALs led the excursion with two boats, while Kash Batal and nine others were in the water for a 30-minute sightseeing swim. The Defense Department, in its own internal emails, called it a VIP snorkel, but it was anything but that. Because approximately 40 feet below him, as he snorkeled on that tour, lay hundreds of American soldiers and Marines in their final resting place, where they have been since the morning of December 7th, 1941. And Kash Patal, the director of the FBI, decided that he wanted to break every moral, ethical, and military standard and snorkel above their graves. The story broke earlier this week by the Associated Press with Jim Mushjan, Eric Tucker, and Michael Biseker pulling government emails through a public records request. The next day, Elizabeth Williamson and Adam Goldman of the New York Times added the details that showed just how grotesque this really was. Because Kashpatal chose to snorkel above the USS Arizona, a war grave. It has the same legal status as Arlington National Cemetery. Sailors, officers, and Marines are still entombed inside the wreck after they were killed when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, marking the pivotal moment the United States entered World War II. The Arizona had been refueled the day before. She went down with about 1.5 million gallons of oil aboard. A Japanese armor-piercing bomb struck the forward deck at 8.06 in the morning and detonated the ammunition magazine. The explosion had the force of more than a million pounds of gunpowder. The ship sank in nine minutes and she burned for days, with over a thousand of her sailors still on board. And over 80 years later, the wreckage still leaks oil with the streaks called the Black Tears of the Arizona. The Park Service has deliberately chosen not to drain the tanks because doing so would disturb the dead. Daniel Martinez, the National Park Service historian at Pearl Harbor, has said that smelling and seeing the oil at the memorial is like a time machine. It takes you back to that morning and reminds you of the men forever enshrined in the waters below. I have stood on that memorial many times. My parents took me there as a teenager because they believed it was important for us to pay respect to the people who lost their lives there. We did not go to Pearl Harbor for entertainment. We went to understand and mourn. And years later I brought my own children on multiple occasions for the same reason, so they too could reflect, learn, and pay respect to the fathers, sons, and grandchildren that so many families never saw again after that fateful day. Hawaii is beautiful. It is one of the most breathtaking places in the world. But Pearl Harbor is different. It was the place where one of the most pivotal and devastating moments in American history happened. It is not a place for swimming or adventure. It is the place where we in future generations learn and remember. We spend our time there thinking about the sailors who ran towards burning ships instead of away from them, about the courage, the sacrifice, the terror, and the chaos of that morning, and the lives that ended there before many of them had even really begun. It takes my breath away to imagine someone, anyone snorkeling there like it was some kind of private tourist excursion. That memorial is not a playground for powerful men looking for a unique experience to brag about later over cocktails. It is a cemetery. It is sacred ground. The water above that ship is not just ocean. It is the final resting place of human beings whose families never got to bury them. And maybe that is what disturbed me most when I read the report. Not just the entitlement of it, but the emptiness behind it. Most of us were taught that places like Pearl Harbor demand reverence, that some places are supposed to humble us. But there seems to be an entire class of powerful people in this country now who move through every institution, every tragedy, and every sacred place as though it exists for their own personal consumption. The rules around memorials reflect what is in that water. Snorkling and diving are prohibited. Visitors are not even allowed to wear swimwear at the memorial. The only people normally permitted in that water are the National Park Service and Navy divers conducting annual maintenance surveys, or Navy divers placing the urns of Arizona survivors into the wreck so they can rest with their shipmates. The last survivor to be interned was Lauren Bruner in December of 2019. He was the second to last man off the ship in 1941. He was burned over two-thirds of his body and crawled hand over hand across a rope to safety. He lived to be 98 years old. His ashes were the 44th and final set placed inside the Arizona by Navy divers. The only people who legitimately enter that water are the ones tasked with caring for the dead or with helping bring more of the dead home to rest beside their brothers. Not even family members of the men who died aboard the USS Arizona are allowed into that water. Imagine knowing your family member is still down there beneath the surface, knowing that some of those men survived the initial bombing only to spend hours, days, and even weeks trapped alive inside the ship, surrounded by darkness, smoke, oil, fire, and twisted steel banging on the hull for help that could not reach them in time. Imagine carrying that grief through generations, knowing that the closest you could ever physically get to your loved one would be the white memorial suspended quietly above their grave. That is what so many people instinctively understand is wrong about this. It reflects a level of entitlement and detachment that feels completely incompatible with the reverence that place is supposed to command. The veterans who saw this story said exactly what needed to be said. William McBride, a Navy veteran and professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, called it horrifying. Snorkeling around Arizona, McBride said, is as disrespectful as playing kickball on top of the graves at Arlington. Hack Albertson is a Marine veteran who is part of the small group from the paralyzed veterans of America trained to dive on the Arizona once a year to check on the condition of the wreck. He has been down there. He has seen what is below the water. He told the Associated Press, it's like having a bachelor party at a church. It's hollowed ground. It needs to be treated with the solemnity it deserves. Rob D. Amico, a former FBI special agent and hostage rescue team operator, was even more direct. The badge is a responsibility, not a VIP pass. And about Patel, he said, the pattern is clear, exotic locations, exclusive access that no member of the public could ever get, and his support staff working overtime to make it happen. And then on top of all of it, there's the cover-up. The FBI never disclosed Patel's two extra days in Hawaii. It was not on his public schedule, and it only came out through reporters pulling government emails out of agencies that did not want to give them up. And we have to infer that the reason it was admitted is that they knew this was wrong. And they did it anyway because they do not care. Not about traditions, not about this country, and certainly not about our fallen heroes. And the cover-up continued with Navy spokesperson, Captain Jody Cornell, telling the Associated Press that the Navy was, and I quote, was not able to track down who initiated it. That is the United States Navy operating out of one of the largest joint military bases in the world, claiming it cannot determine who organized a snorkeling adventure requiring two boats, a SEAL team, and ten participants near one of the most restricted underwater memorial sites in the country. And if they truly cannot figure it out, that is almost as disturbing as the alternative. That means that they are participating in this disgusting protection racket around powerful people who increasingly seem to believe rules, traditions, and even sacred spaces simply do not apply to them. Either way, something is deeply wrong here. Ben Williamson, the FBI spokesperson, called the AP's framing stupid and called the swim a historical tour to honor heroes who died on the USS Arizona. Not a party. A historical tour. They think we are stupid. And they think they can get away with it because, to a real extent, they have been getting away with everything. And this is not Patel's first scandal. This is the same FBI director who has repeatedly acted like the rules do not apply to him. The same man accused of using taxpayer-funded planes and government resources for his personal convenience. The same man who brought his girlfriend into situations and privileges that previous FBI directors would have understood were completely inappropriate. The same man who has faced allegations of heavy drinking, disappearing from work for stretches of time, and lashing out at journalists when they report on his behavior. And every time another story comes out, the response seems less focused on accountability and more focused on punishing the people who expose it. This is who runs the FBI right now. This is who is supposed to be protecting this country from actual threats. And he was reportedly snorkeling above a war grave. And we have to remember that Kashvatel is not the outliner in this administration. He takes his orders from the man who called those in the military who died in the line of duty losers. In 2018, during a trip to France for the centennial of the end of World War I, Donald Trump refused to visit the Assanimar American Cemetery near Paris, where Americans killed in World War I are buried. According to multiple senior staff members who were on that trip, what he said was, Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers. He also called the U.S. Marines who died at the Battle of Bellowwood suckers for getting killed. The original Atlantic report was attacked as a hoax. Then John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine General, Trump's former chief of staff, and the gold star father of First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, killed in action in Afghanistan and buried at Arlington, confirmed all of it on the record. Kelly was there. He heard it and he said it out loud. This is a man who thinks the people who died defending this country are suckers and losers. Kelly also confirmed that on Memorial Day 2017, standing at Section 60 at Arlington with the graves of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan all around them, Trump turned to him and said, I don't get it. What was in it for them? The same man that told Kelly that he did not want wounded veterans, including amputees and the men in wheelchairs, in his military parade because it doesn't look good for me. This is the man who appointed Kashmittal. This is the man who renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. This is the culture that made a VIP snorkel above the bones of sailors look like a reasonable way to spend a warm August afternoon. This is who they are. This is not a series of unrelated scandals. This is a worldview. They see the people who serve this country living and dead as scenery, as props, as losers and suckers, and when they get caught treating sacred ground like a tourist attraction, they smear the reporters who found it, hunt the sources who leaked it, and tell us we are stupid for being upset. We cannot let them keep going. This is the director of the FBI. He is supposed to be the country's top law enforcement official. He is supposed to be leading the agency responsible for counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and protecting every American. Every single day he stays in that job, the message gets louder. Sacred sites belong to him. Public resources belong to them. Our military, living and dead, belong to them. We cannot afford another year of this. We cannot afford another month. We have to keep pushing. We have to keep showing up. We have to make November 2026 the moment we take back Congress and start to stop this. This story, his complete disrespect for our military, took the breath out of my lungs. And I want to speak directly to those who have lost a loved one defending our country, those who sacrificed years of time with spouses, parents, children, and siblings because duty called them away. And those who still carry the grief of someone who never made it home. You and your loved ones deserve better. Our country deserves better. Kash Patal is a failed human being and completely unqualified, unserious, and unworthy of the position he holds. The fact that he is in charge of the FBI is due to corrupt and cowardly members of Congress who chose loyalty to a felon over loyalty to their country and the institutions they swore to protect. What has happened and whatever comes next is on them. The past week offers a look into what is to come as we head into November. More desperate people doing desperate things. I'm already planning my life and my families around, doing everything in my power to make sure the midterms are where this begins to turn around. It is going to be exhausting, but I am up for the challenge. And I want to thank all of you once again for allowing me to do this. Your support, making sure these posts continue reaching new people. Your paid subscriptions and your comments and encouragement are what keep me going and able to do this work during these challenging times. I promise to keep doing this and more, even when it feels that we are up against insurmountable odds. Because we can never give up. We have generations to come counting on us. And here is what I want to leave you with. While the Trump administration is focused on fighting hard to restrict access to free and fair elections and swimming in burial grounds, Americans took to the streets yesterday to remind this regime who America really is. In Selma, Alabama, yesterday morning, thousands of people marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the same bridge where 61 years ago, on bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, peaceful marchers were beaten bloody by Alabama State troopers for trying to win the right to vote. From Selma, they continued to the Alabama State Capitol at Montgomery, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his How Long, not Long speech at the end of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March. The stage yesterday was set in front of the Capitol, flanked from behind by statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and civil rights icon Rosa Parks, two tributes erected nearly 90 years apart. They came in response to the Supreme Court's April 29 decision in Louisiana versus Calais, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Since that ruling, conservative states have raced to redraw their maps to eliminate black political representation. Yesterday's march was a National Day of Action. Reverend Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., was there. Shalila Dowdy, a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, told the crowd, we are not going down without a fight. We are not going down to Jim Crow maps. Kirk Carrington, 75 years old, was a teenager in Selma on Bloody Sunday in 1965. A white man on a horse with a stick chased him through the streets that day. He was there again yesterday morning. It's really just appalling to me. And all the young people that marched during the 60s fought hard to get voting rights, equal rights, and civil rights. It's sad that it's continuing after 60 plus years, that we are still fighting for the same thing we fought for back then. Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, said, we have to accept that this is the new reality, whether we like it or not. We do not have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever. It would have been easy for any of the people marching to just accept that this is our new reality, but they didn't. They spent a Saturday surrounded by thousands of others marching to demand the right to vote once again. They did not roll over and give up. They stood together and reminded the people in power that this country still belongs to all of us, not just the wealthy, the connected, or the authoritarian man trying to hollow democracy out from the inside. And that is why I still have hope for America, and you should too. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, I will be here every single day, and together we will always find hope for America. I'll see you tomorrow.