(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

In April, FBI Director Kash Patel promoted an FBI agent named Steven Jensen to head the prestigious Washington field office. Almost immediately, Patel and his deputy director, Dan Bongino, began to get heat from Trump supporters online over the decision. In social media posts tagging Patel and Bongino, critics let the image-conscious pair know that Jensen had been involved in the FBI’s January 6th investigations

No voice on the right was louder than an ex-FBI agent turned conservative podcaster named Kyle Seraphin. In a steady stream of social media posts, Seraphin dogged Patel’s management of the bureau, including over Jensen’s promotion.

It apparently irritated Patel to no end. According to Jensen, Patel suggested that Jensen sue Seraphin for defamation and even recommended some lawyers.

In Jensen’s telling, Patel said a defamation lawsuit would get some pressure off of Patel. Jensen ultimately declined to go after Seraphin. He told Patel that he was “unconcerned with the viewpoints of online personalities.”

Those revelations about the irritation Seraphin has caused Patel were buried in a lawsuit that Jensen and other agents filed against Patel and the FBI this month alleging wrongful termination. Elsewhere in the suit are other data points. For example, the head of the Las Vegas field office was told to stop posting on social media and ultimately fired after being criticized by Seraphin, according to the same lawsuit.

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Beyond the lawsuit, there are even more examples. The New York Times reported last week that Patel fired another agent at the bureau after Seraphin falsely claimed that agent was central to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid.

“Are you really listening to this guy?” former FBI acting director Brian Driscoll asked Patel about Seraphin at one point, according to the Times report. Driscoll is another of the three fired personnel in the lawsuit against Patel.

The incidents offer a glimpse into the outsized power wielded by Seraphin at a moment of intense chaos and uncertainty inside the FBI. In a matter of months, Seraphin has become a mischievous bogeyman for Patel’s operation, using his experience, sources within the agency, and pugnacious online persona to constantly goad the director.

The FBI declined a request for comment. But Seraphin seems to be reveling in the idea that he’s got Patel spooked. He told me he was happy to point out Patel’s “incompetent, bumbling actions” for the whole world to see, and agreed that he seems to live in Patel’s head.

“It very much appears that he understands that he’s way out of his depth,” Seraphin said.

Seraphin is no liberal. He joined the FBI in 2016 and worked on surveillance and counterintelligence teams, but was suspended in 2022 in a dispute over the bureau’s COVID rules. He then rose to prominence as a right-wing whistleblower after complaining to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) about the FBI’s treatment of parents at school-board meetings.

Seraphin was actually once on friendly terms with Patel. He says he received $10,000 from Patel’s “Kash Foundation” nonprofit in 2022 when he was “essentially homeless” after leaving the FBI. And he said he met Patel in person a handful of times, in addition to also appearing on Bongino’s podcast.

If he has a primary grievance with Patel, he insisted, it is that Patel hasn’t shaken up the bureau enough. But there are secondary criticisms, too. Seraphin, himself fairly prolific on Twitter, told me that he thought Patel’s social media activity was not just unprecedented for an FBI director but “really thirsty and desperate.”

“Nobody did this before,” Seraphin said. “Nobody felt like they were supposed to go out there and be a social media star and FBI director.”

Seraphin’s track record on accusations regarding the FBI isn’t perfect. For example, there’s no evidence that the agent he accused of leading the Mar-a-Lago raid was involved in it. In our discussion, Seraphin didn’t defend his work so much as counter that Patel, who as director has access to the FBI’s personnel files, shouldn’t make personnel decisions based on Seraphin’s tweets.

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Seraphin said he wasn’t happy to learn that Patel had allegedly asked a subordinate to sue him for defamation. He argued that the FBI director telling an employee to sue someone for speech and even offering to help find a lawyer would be a clear First Amendment violation. He made clear that, in addition to the constitutional considerations, he thought this reflected poorly on Patel’s competence.

“It’s barely checkers, it’s certainly not chess moves,” Seraphin said.

Patel himself hasn’t sued Seraphin, but someone else in his circle eventually did: Last month, Patel’s girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, sued the podcaster for suggesting that she’s a Mossad agent “honeypot” out to control Patel and cover up the Jeffrey Epstein case. Wilkins is being represented by Jesse Binnall, Patel’s personal lawyer and a member of his nonprofit’s board.

For his part, Seraphin said he meant Wilkins was a “honeypot” in a positive way.

“It’s kind of a compliment, actually,” he said.

Such a web of accusations, lawsuits, mockery, and boasts would be fairly typical for a MAGA-world beef if not for the fact that these people are currently some of the top law-enforcement officials in the country. But even in these waters, Seraphin seems to stand out for his brashness. In addition to tangling with Patel, he has also tweaked another prominent right-wing figure. In July, he was deposed in undercover right-wing video operative James O’Keefe’s legal battle with O’Keefe’s former Project Veritas nonprofit, after Seraphin posted leaked lewd messages between O’Keefe and his girlfriend, a star of the Netflix reality show Selling the OC.

The deposition video, which O’Keefe posted online, shows Seraphin gleefully taunting O’Keefe and his lawyer, describing O’Keefe as being of “low moral character.” At one point, O’Keefe’s lawyer asked Seraphin what he meant when he posted that O’Keefe should “FOAD.”

“It’s commonly understood to mean ‘F Off and Die,’” Seraphin responded.

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As the Western world faces a tide of far-right populism, it’s only natural that Europe should get its own Nick Fuentes—or even a few of them. As the white-nationalist podcaster has gained a major foothold in America, he has also spawned imitators across the Atlantic, in countries from Portugal to the United Kingdom. Like Fuentes, these young men in ties have online shows where they offer viewers a mix of sardonic banter, deep religiosity, and noxious views.

But could some of these upstarts be opportunists, and not true Fuentes acolytes? That may be the case for the British Nick Fuentes, a young man named Hugh Anthony, who saw his far-right alt-media career implode this week under mounting evidence that he’s gay—a big taboo in the groyper community.

(Screenshot via X)

Anthony’s trouble began when a California twink posted some flirtatious direct messages Anthony had sent him on X. More trouble came soon after, including a video posted on X that showed an apparently drunken Anthony smiling as a friend discussed having Grindr troubles.

Then a tweet from just four months ago emerged in which Anthony described himself as gay, suggesting his conversion to the religious-conservative lifestyle has come on really quickly. Making matters worse, Anthony’s social media manager said on X that he had once done some OnlyFans work to make money “to survive.”

Anthony’s fans, needless to say, don’t see this as very “Rule Brittania.” But Anthony says he’s leaving all that in the past. At risk of losing his British groyper fans, Anthony recorded a very depressing speech, delivered in front of a grotesque JD Vance meme photo, in which he said he wished he could slap his formerly gay, nightclubbing self.

“I was a lustful man,” Anthony said. “I was a sinner.”

Meanwhile, the genuine Fuentes is set to cash in. This week, he appeared on a show hosted by MAGA business podcaster Patrick Bet-David. During his appearance, Fuentes announced he will be joining the likes of right-wing activist Laura Loomer and former Gambino crime family underboss Sammy “the Bull” Gravano on the platform Minnect, a sort of Cameo for hustle bros run by Bet-David.

What that means is that Fuentes will soon be doing video calls and dispensing wisdom—for a whopping $21,000 per hour! Loomer’s rate, by comparison, is only $1,500 an hour.

While $21,000 might seem steep for career advice from a self-described incel, I know one person who could use Fuentes’s wisdom: the British Fuentes clone currently embroiled in a gay sex scandal! Best of luck to him.

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