FBI Director Kash Patel instructed the bureau's public-affairs operation to repeatedly promote FBI statistics to social-media users criticizing him over Jeffrey Epstein, but his top communications official declined to engage with the anonymous X account at the center of the dispute, according to FBI messages released with records connected to the Epstein files.
The Feb. 5 exchange between Patel and Ben Williamson, the FBI's assistant director for public affairs, offers an unusual look at how the bureau's leadership weighed its official communications resources against online criticism of its director. The messages centered on an X account using the handle @IfindRetards, which had posted Patel's official portrait while mocking him amid continuing debate over the government's handling of Epstein-related records. Reporting on the newly disclosed exchange says Williamson characterized the account as an "Epstein didn't kill himself" bot account.
Patel nonetheless wanted the bureau to respond by distributing statistics describing the FBI's recent performance. Referring to what he believed were 277,000 responses to the post, Patel wrote: "What I asked you and your team to do is find them, and post our record year results back at them all, continuously."
Williamson told Patel that the number had been misread. The roughly 277,000 figure represented views rather than replies, he said, while the post itself had generated only about 400 responses.
The communications chief then explained why the FBI's press operation hadn't followed Patel's instruction. "We're not responding to 'ifindr------s.' That would look bad on you," Williamson wrote, according to the released records. Patel responded that the identity of the account wasn't the important issue, arguing that the hundreds of thousands of people who had seen the criticism should also be exposed to the bureau's performance figures.
The exchange suggests Patel viewed social-media criticism not simply as commentary to be ignored but as an audience for the FBI's own messaging. It also shows an internal limit being imposed by the bureau's communications operation, with Williamson concluding that direct engagement with the account risked amplifying the attack rather than rebutting it.
The statistics Patel wanted promoted reflected a broader campaign by the FBI to highlight falling crime rates and enforcement activity during his tenure. The bureau's 2025 national crime data showed violent crime falling an estimated 9.3% from the previous year, while murder and non-negligent manslaughter declined 18.1% and robbery fell 18.5%.
Those figures represent national trends based on submissions from more than 17,000 law-enforcement agencies rather than a measure of the FBI director's individual performance. The FBI says the 2025 decline was the largest year-to-year drop in the national violent-crime rate since it began estimating such trends in 1936, while also cautioning that crime patterns vary by jurisdiction and that its figures are based on offenses reported to participating agencies.
Patel has repeatedly cited the data while promoting what he describes as the bureau's "record" results. In May, the FBI's preliminary annual figures showed murder down 18.1%, rape down 7.6%, aggravated assault down 7.2% and property crime down 12.4%. The bureau subsequently said the estimates were supported by the more detailed annual data released in August.
The FBI director has also pointed to enforcement totals, including arrests of violent offenders, gang disruptions and the recovery or location of child victims, as evidence that the bureau has increased operational activity. The newly released messages indicate Patel wanted those kinds of results injected directly into hostile online conversations about his leadership rather than relying solely on press releases, speeches or official FBI accounts.
Once the messages became public, the exchange generated another round of criticism online, this time focused less on the Epstein dispute itself than on Patel's attention to an anonymous social-media account. Writer Josh Billinson joked that he had expected the records to show Patel explaining the problem to a junior communications employee rather than personally directing the response.
Democratic strategist Jesse Lee also criticized Patel's handling of the matter, questioning whether responding to online mockery was an appropriate use of the FBI director's attention. Those reactions are political commentary rather than findings about the bureau's conduct, but they helped propel the internal exchange beyond the original X thread.
