FBI omitted Patel's Navy-arranged 'VIP snorkel' at USS Arizona from public trip account

When FBI Director Kash Patel traveled to Australia and New Zealand on official business in August 2025, the bureau's public news releases documented his Honolulu Field Office visit on the outbound leg and his meetings with foreign counterparts, but left out two other portions of the trip: a Navy-coordinated "VIP Snorkel" around the sunken USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, and a two-day return stop in Hawaii on the way back to the mainland. The Associated Press surfaced both on May 14, 2026, in a report drawn from government emails it obtained through a public records request. Flight-tracking data showed the Gulfstream G550 typically used by the director remained on Hawaii two nights during the second stay before flying on to Las Vegas, Patel's adopted hometown. A Navy spokesperson, Capt. Jodie Cornell, confirmed the outing and said participants were briefed on the historic significance of the memorial; the service said it could not identify who initiated the swim.

The USS Arizona is one of the country's most hallowed sites — the 1941 wreck entombs more than 900 sailors and Marines, and recreational diving at the memorial is generally off-limits. The Navy and the National Park Service have, since at least the Obama administration, quietly extended snorkeling access to a small number of dignitaries and officials connected to the memorial's management, and the Navy described Patel's outing as "not an anomaly." Still, according to a former government diver and others familiar with FBI travel, no FBI director going back to at least 1993 had previously snorkeled at the site. The National Park Service told AP it was not involved in Patel's swim. A Marine veteran who dives the wreck annually, Hack Albertson, called the outing inappropriate: "It's like having a bachelor party at a church. It's hallowed ground."

This is recorded under self-dealing because the discrete event documents two intertwined uses of public office for personal benefit: rare VIP access to a closed military memorial extended to the FBI director through Navy logistics on the back of an official trip, and the FBI Gulfstream G550 carrying Patel through a two-day personal Hawaii stop and onward to his adopted hometown. The companion concern — that the FBI's contemporaneous public account of the trip omitted both segments, surfacing only via a FOIA-style records request — speaks to transparency rather than to any single abuse slug in the current taxonomy. The story also fits a broader pattern flagged by oversight critics around Patel's blending of official duties with personal travel and recreation, which this archive tracks discretely rather than as a single episode.