MS NOW Redefines Fake News With Kash Patel Shocker

Much to the dismay of just about everybody at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, the FBI director, flew into Moscow on Oct. 14 for meetings. No one at the bureau appeared to know why their boss had traveled to Moscow or what he was doing there. At least that was what MS NOW reported breathlessly as “breaking news.” The only problem with this cutting-edge investigative journalism is that Patel, at the time, was attending a law enforcement appreciation event at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.

So, did Patel fake his appearance at the Lynchburg event while secretly flying to Russia? Unless he now has an identical twin or an incredible body double, he did not – because photographs and live news footage from a local TV station show him meeting and talking with various people in Lynchburg.

Rep. John McGuire (R-VA) posted on X, “Today I was proud to welcome @FBIDirectorKash to Lynchburg for a roundtable discussion I hosted with local law enforcement and students from Liberty University School of Law.” Attached to the post was a photograph of McGuire shaking hands with a smiling Patel and another picture of the two men sitting on a panel and taking questions from Liberty University students.

MS NOW Broken by Its Own Breaking News

Meanwhile, Peter Alexander, who hosts the MS NOW show State of Play, was clearly bemused, befuddled, and flabbergasted that the director of the FBI would be so reckless as to fly into a country that, at the present time, is most definitely America's adversary.

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Such was the gravity of the situation that Alexander called upon MS NOW justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian to share his expert insight.

“We don’t know what Kash Patel is doing in Russia,” Dilanian told Alexander with a concerned look. “And that's one of the things that's concerning our FBI sources. They don't know either. The FBI is not saying anything about this.”

Ben Williamson, the FBI's assistant director for public affairs, had something to say about it. On X, he wrote:

“I have had many strange experiences in life, but in tier 1 had to be seeing a clip of MS Now reporting breaking news that Kash Patel has ‘just landed in Russia’ – right as I'm receiving pics of Kash Patel doing a law enforcement appreciation event today in Lynchburg, Virginia.”

Williamson wasn't done there, either. “Also, reporter friends,” he wrote in a separate post. "It's not ‘FBI *says* Kash Patel is in Lynchburg VA.’ He is literally there. There are time-stamped photos and live streams showing it. Rep. John McGuire has tweeted it. He's a ‘source familiar’ if you will."

But MS NOW was all over the story, presumably giddy with excitement that it had exposed some major Trump administration scandal. The FBI director secretly flies to Moscow just weeks before the midterm elections. Whatever could he be doing?

Beware of Media ‘Sources’

The cable network, formerly known as MSNBC, even managed to dredge up former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Michael Feinberg to share his reactions to the big news on another MS NOW show. Clearly no fan of Patel's, Feinberg described the current FBI director as “a babe in the woods” when it comes to national security.

It is rather embarrassing for a former senior FBI official to throw himself in front of a TV camera to berate the man who now runs the bureau without first checking with his own sources that what MS NOW reported was accurate.

A search for “Kash Patel” on the MS NOW website threw up the headline: "Sources say FBI Director Kash Patel is in Russia for a meeting." That report must have been quickly scrubbed, though, because clicking on the headline bounced back to the MS NOW homepage.

If there is anyone in America still wondering why most people do not trust the news media, MS NOW must be one of the best examples of why that is.

Rumors have swirled since Politico reported in the summer that Patel was planning to visit Russia in October, an exclusive story based on the words of an anonymous US official and “a person familiar with the situation.” Unfortunately, the so-called mainstream media in America has been known, at least on occasion, to fabricate stories, rumors, and gossip to create a scandal where none exists. At the same time, ironically, these same news outlets will ignore real scandals involving their favored politicians.

Did MS NOW dream up the Kash Patel Russia visit, or did its “FBI sources,” either deliberately or through incompetence, provide them with false information? Though the network retracted the story and made a groveling apology on-air, we may never know what led it to jettison editorial due diligence or whether the folks at MS NOW cosplaying as journalists even really have FBI sources.