First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
MS NOW told viewers Wednesday, citing two unnamed sources, that the FBI director had landed in Russia for FSB-hosted meetings. The FBI answered with video of Patel at a Liberty University law-enforcement event — and the network corrected the story on air.
MS NOW reported Wednesday that FBI Director Kash Patel had landed in Russia for a two-day trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, citing two unnamed sources who said the visit would be hosted by the FSB, Russia's security service. Anchor Peter Alexander introduced it as breaking news in the network's 11 a.m. ET hour, and justice correspondent Ken Dilanian said his FBI sources were concerned because they did not know what Patel was doing there.
There was one problem: Patel was in the United States, on a stage at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The FBI's Rapid Response account fired back within minutes, posting video of Patel speaking live at the law-enforcement appreciation event — microphone in hand, nameplate visible — and declaring that MS NOW's "sources" are "familiar" with NOTHING. Video from an ABC News affiliate in Virginia showed the same event, Reuters reported.
FBI public-affairs chief Ben Williamson posted that he was receiving photos of Patel at the Lynchburg event at the very moment MS NOW was reporting the director had just landed in Russia.
Patel himself responded on X with "Facts over clickbait," and said the network owes an apology "to this FBI, the men and women of law enforcement, and to the American people."
By early afternoon, Dilanian was back on air correcting the story: "We've since learned that Patel did not, in fact, land in Russia today and remains in the U.S.," adding that the network regrets the error. An MS NOW spokesperson pointed Fox News Digital to that correction as the network's response.
Politico had reported in July that a Patel trip to Russia was planned for mid-October, but no such trip took place on Wednesday — the director spent it in Lynchburg, in front of cameras, in Virginia.
Two unnamed sources against a man on a stage with a microphone, a nameplate and cameras rolling: this is what "verified before amplified" is for, and it is why the network spent the afternoon eating its own breaking news.
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