224 arrests in Baltimore in 3 months: a conversation with FBI Director Kash Patel

PUBLISHED: October 6, 2025 | www.baltimoresun.com

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Set the table for Operation Summer Heat.

This is news. We kept it quiet for the summer. Operation Summer Heat was a 3-month surge by the FBI with our state and local partners. We started at the end of June and just wrapped up at the end of September. What we did was follow one goal, crushing violent crime — one of this administration’s key priorities. We went into every single field office, we have 55 field offices scattered across the country.

Why is full collaboration with state and local partners essential?

Because no single federal agency, or the federal government, can secure the entire nation without our state and local law enforcement partners. You have to recognize the roughly 1 million state and local officers across our 50 states doing the job. They have the best relationships in the community and the ground-level intelligence. They also have assets and resources that, when synced with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, make the most dynamic police force on God’s green earth.

That’s the beauty of moving agents out of D.C., as you and I have discussed. When you take a thousand folks out of D.C. and put them into the field, they support Operation Summer Heat on a permanent basis with state and local law enforcement. With fewer people in D.C. for the FBI and more intel analysts, more federal agents, and more support staff in the field, that’s what it takes to build these cases. You can’t just walk into a city and say, “Ok, there are 150 law enforcement officers here, let’s go arrest people.” You have to build a ground game of intelligence that takes months. That’s what we did in Memphis, Chicago, and New Orleans. And that’s why, at President [Donald] Trump’s direction, we went in quietly months ago into these cities to set Phase 0/1. Now we’re going in with the Guard to complete that project. That’s the beauty of operations like Summer Heat.

When you say “the Guard,” do you mean the National Guard? What’s their role?

We absolutely have used them. Under President Trump’s leadership, we needed the National Guard in Washington, D.C. You and I both know, we live here, Washington, D.C. was a hotbed of criminal activity. We’ve had so much drug crime here. Rightfully, President Trump sent us in quietly months ago to set the stage. But to complete the mission, the president was right, we needed the National Guard to set a stable perimeter.

That is the critical piece the Guard brings to this fight. We don’t need them being law enforcement officers, and they’re not. I want to make that crystal clear. What they allow law enforcement to do, the FBI, the interagency, state and local authorities, is work safely within the city street corners: operate and conduct investigations, bust into houses, take bad guys off the streets, seize firearms. And they don’t have to worry that the next house over has another gang activity in it that might attack them because we didn’t know about it. That’s the beauty of having the National Guard. And they’re going to be setting up these perimeters in all these other cities, thanks to the president.

Walk us through the Summer Heat results.

Summer Heat was all 55 field offices across America. And while we can’t give you all of every single field office’s stats, look at some of these: In three months, Summer Heat had 8,700 arrests. In three months, Summer Heat had 2,281 firearms seized, permanently off our streets. Fentanyl: 421 kilograms seized. By the way, that’s enough to kill over 50 million Americans — 50 million on the low end, conservative estimate —  lethal doses from that seizure. Cocaine: 45,000 kgs. seized. We conducted operations that led to 2,000 indictments and 1,400 convictions. And the bulk of that work came from our violent crime and gang forces. Operation Summer Heat [also] found and located almost 1,000 child victims and returned them to safety, victims of sexual trafficking, victims of home abuse, victims of rape and violent crimes against children. All of it is shocking.

Where does Operation Viper fit into this?

That’s a great question. To execute Operation Summer Heat successfully across the board, we had to surge into certain cities that had [problems with] violent crime, for instance, Memphis, New Orleans, and elsewhere. What they needed was specialized FBI resources. They needed our teams to come in with our specialized investigative tools that allow us to map out the infrastructure that the enemy is operating in, to locate them, and to work with state and local law enforcement officers to say, “Now we’ve got search warrants to kick down these doors because we know where the bad guys are.”

Operation Viper was a critical component to supplement Operation Summer Heat. This is what the FBI is good at doing when you let good cops be cops. And I didn’t mention it: These are record-breaking results for any seven-month period ever at the FBI. At a bare minimum, all these arrests, convictions, and seizures are up 20% to 40% from the same time last year.

Put the firearms and drug seizures in community context.

We seized, permanently, an entire hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, that was the epicenter of gang and criminal activity for narco-trafficking. And we took it. And the same thing on a fraud scheme down in New Orleans, in southeastern USA, we seized multiple entities in a health care fraud scheme, seized permanently off the streets, off the market. So the critical element we need for Summer Heat to sustain itself is sustainment. We have to leave a footprint in the cities of security, and that’s what we’re doing with Summer Heat. By taking all this off the streets and seizing the assets that were hotbeds of criminal activities, the criminals know they can’t go in there because the second they step in, they’re getting arrested and added to these statistics.

How do you expand this nationwide?

We’re already there. The FBI is in every major city, and Summer Heat shows the highest record numbers of arrests. These are only the cities with the top numbers: New York – 471, L.A. – 441, Boston – 404, those are just the top eight. We have stats for every single city. We have 345 resident agencies throughout America. And what we’ve done is partner with the Department of Justice and our attorney general and deputy attorney general to bring prosecutions, because that’s what you need. You need indictments. These indictments are across the country, in every single state, as I mentioned, Alaska, which people might forget about. We’re everywhere, and we’re staying. And that’s the beauty of the redeployment of our resources at the FBI from Washington, D.C.

When I first got here on the job, I found out a third of our workforce worked in the NCR, the National Capital Region. One-third of our 37,000 personnel worked for us there, and I said that’s unacceptable because a third of the crime doesn’t happen in Washington, D.C. in the NCR. So we pushed them out. That’s why Americans know and are seeing the FBI out there in full force, because they’re literally out there in numbers they’ve never been before.

Baltimore specifically: if local leaders don’t want the Guard, how do you still reduce crime?

The political leadership in Baltimore needs to recognize what the president did here. He asked us to go in quietly months ago because of the criminal rise in places like Baltimore. We don’t see politics in crime, but we are going to leverage the full authorities under this presidency to go in there and do what we did in Baltimore: 224 violent [crime] arrests in three months. That’s not in seven months, that’s in three months.

Emphasize what you mean by “violent arrests.”

Violent. These aren’t misdemeanors or Mickey Mouse operations. Guns, narco-trafficking; people who do harm to our children, who entrap them, enslave them, traffic them. This is the worst of the worst: murderers and gangs. That’s why I highlighted the violent crime and gang statistic: 6,500 of these arrests were just violent crime and gang-related alone.

And so when people come back at us and say, “We don’t want the National Guard,” just look at what happened here in Washington, D.C. The National Guard came in and set up safe perimeters and zones and allowed the public to see what the Guard was doing, which was simply setting up perimeters. And that’s what we can do in places like Baltimore if they want to work with us and get the job done. Who doesn’t want a safer town for their child to go to the park? Who doesn’t want a town with more guns removed from the streets? Who doesn’t want a town with more fentanyl seized so your kid doesn’t overdose at the park? It doesn’t make any sense to me for anyone to argue against it.

Critics say Summer Heat retasked the FBI to street crime at the expense of counterintelligence and domestic terrorism. Was this a surge or a pivot?

It was a recognition of the explosion of violent crime while staying on mission to defend the homeland. As you walk around this building, you’ll see the top two priorities of this Bureau: defend the homeland and crush violent crime. We can do both at the same time, and that’s what we’re doing. For those who don’t understand the numbers or want to attack politically, let me put these numbers in front of you. Counterintelligence arrests year-to-date, a seven-month period since I took over, against the PRC, Iran, and the Russians, are up 60%, 85% and 35%, respectively. That doesn’t happen if you come off the counterintelligence mission. And those facts speak for themselves. Just to put an umbrella over it. This year alone, the FBI has had 24,000 arrests of violent offenders, 24,000 violent arrests year to date. From last year, that is a 125% increase. So if we’re not doing our job and we’re not finding the bad guys, then we must be making up a lot of numbers.

What’s the winter version of Operation Summer Heat?

Maybe we’ll call it Frostbite. But that’s the key, we have to sustain for the American people. We have to show the longevity of the program. And the way we do that is by highlighting what the FBI has done outside of Summer Heat. While all of this is going on, the FBI has arrested four of its Top 10 Most Wanted fugitives in the world, four in seven months. To put that in perspective, the prior administration got four in four years. That includes Cindy Singh in the state of Texas, who [was accused of murdering] her mentally disabled 6-year-old son and fled to India. No one wanted to look for her. We found her in two months, thanks to the Indian government and our interagency partners. On top of all that, we got the Abbey Gate bomber in two weeks. The Biden administration couldn’t look for him for four years; we got him in two weeks. He’s sitting in a jail right now. We removed the red tape, and we get after the mission, as the president has instructed us. Protecting the homeland is the priority of this administration and the people.

Conspiracy theories followed the Charlie Kirk case. Can the public accept that Tyler Robinson acted alone in allegedly assassinating the Turning Point USA founder?

The simple answer, in my opinion, is social media is wildly out of control, and there’s too much clickbait in this country. One of the things I highlighted to Congress in my [recent] testimony was: If we want to protect our youth, we’ve got to get more involved in social media and online platforms, because that’s where the assassins of this world get radicalized, that’s where the lone-wolf actors are, in general. We have to get after that problem set, and I asked Congress to do so.

Speaking of Charlie Kirk, who is a very dear friend of mine, I was tasked with leading the nationwide manhunt to find the perpetrators involved. Of course we were going to use every resource we have to find every single person involved. The investigation is still ongoing. But transparency is a pillar of my leadership at the FBI. We’ve produced more documents to Congress than my last two predecessors combined, by twofold, just to put it in perspective.

So when we take our investigations out to the streets, I have the same ethos. This is how we got Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin so fast. We flew out to Utah. We landed on the ground and said, “I want the video analysis. I want it stripped and broken down so that we can feed out to the American public who this person is,” because we didn’t know yet. I wanted enhanced images, and we held a press conference at my direction. We put the videos and images out. The suspect was in custody two hours later, 33 hours from the time Charlie was shot to the time we put handcuffs on him and had him in custody. For perspective: the Boston Marathon bombers took five days, and a police officer was killed in that manhunt. Luigi Mangione, who allegedly murdered a CEO in downtown Manhattan in broad daylight, took five days to find.

Should we expect more arrests in the Charlie Kirk case?

What I can assure the American public is: The State of Utah is prosecuting this case, and they have a great team out there. And the FBI is the leading federal investigative authority. We will leave no stone unturned. We are serving legal process to scores of individuals and companies. We are interviewing scores of witnesses who were on the ground and in the area that day, and wherever they might be around this world. If they had a tether to the Charlie Kirk assassination, they are going to be tracked down, and if they were involved, we are going to recommend charges to the appropriate authorities.

Our investigation is very much ongoing, but we’ve also, in an unusual step, put out publicly more information as to what we found because it is of such public importance. The flip side is social media: People get involved and run with crazy conspiracy theories because it makes them money and gives them clickbait. I don’t work for them, and I don’t respond to them. My duty is to the American people. If there was anyone else involved in Charlie Kirk’s murder, you can look at our record, we’ll find them, and we’ll get them.

There’s debate online about whether certain donors or foundations fund anti-American groups. Can you address that?

Speaking to matters like Antifa, for example, and the new [executive order] that the president signed [dseignating it a domestic terrorist organization] and the designations giving us authorities we never had, what we are able to do is what I’ve done my entire career under investigations: follow the money — serve legal process and follow the money.

These groups don’t just show up overnight. You don’t have hundreds of people surround a courthouse overnight, then move down to L.A. and cause riots, then move halfway across the country and cause disruptions in Chicago and elsewhere. It is an organized effort that someone, or some groups, are paying for. We have open investigations on multiple groups and individuals funding these efforts. We have legal process that has already been executed. Search-warrant results are coming in. I’ll also remind the American people: Complex investigations take time. In the days of social media and a 24/7 news cycle, people want immediacy. If you abide by that requirement, you will fail in your investigative duties.

After recent attacks and plots against Jews abroad, is the FBI up to penetrating domestic terrorist groups, and stopping attacks before anyone dies?

We absolutely are, and the American public across the country sees it. We defeat and disrupt these acts before they happen. We did it in places like Louisiana. We have an ongoing operation and takedown happening. We’ve stopped crimes in Texas and elsewhere from happening because of our domestic terrorism authorities and our international terrorism authorities. We have covert online employees. We have undercovers penetrating these systems. More importantly, we have individuals accessing these group chats, working for us or as a source with us, who are penetrating the nodes and allowing us to use the FBI’s intelligence authorities, partnering with our intelligence community, to seize, suspend, and disrupt operations before they happen.

Most of the time the public doesn’t hear about those. When we can bring an arrest, we’re very public and very loud about it because we want the public to know we are disrupting all the time. In fact, we just disrupted a school shooting in New York City a week and a half ago. We put it out there: The FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received a tip from a social media company. This is how it works. We’ve got relationships. They tell us, “Hey, this kid was going to go shoot up the school in New York City.” We immediately acted, executed search warrants, found the kid with a firearm at the school, and stopped the school shooting.

Can you arrest people who post manifestos online about killing or assassinating?

When you talk about killing and assassinating, that’s violence. That’s not protected speech. We’re going after those people, absolutely. We have to protect First Amendment-protected speech, but when you threaten humans, groups, or communities, you bet the FBI is coming after you.

Do you have the resources? Reports say hundreds of agents left as of Oct. 1. Does that cripple you?

We do have the resources. Recruitment since we took over has exploded. We have doubled record highs of my prior two predecessors in terms of recruiting intel analysts, federal law enforcement agents, and other staff for the FBI. We’re increasing throughput and putting them through places like Quantico and Redstone, our training facilities, and getting them out to the field. Of course, after 9/11, that cohort is entering the 20 [to] 25 years of service window, that’s when they retire. We always expected that to happen.

How would a prolonged government shutdown impact your mission and pay?

The beauty of the FBI is that the men and women put the mission first and foremost, and we are exempt from the overall shutdown because of the national security and law enforcement mission that we have.

Do they still get paid during a shutdown?

That’s the problem, the biggest problem. They work; they don’t get their pay until it’s resolved. They’ll get their full back pay.

Will they still do their jobs with the same enthusiasm, especially when members of Congress still get paid?

It’s my job to motivate them to do so. But here’s what I’ve learned: I don’t really need to motivate them. They’ve come in with an enthusiasm, during field office visits I’ve done throughout the country in my seven months, that people who’ve been here for decades told me they haven’t seen or had. They said they’ve now been able to do what they signed up to do at the FBI, because the red tape’s gone and we’re letting them be good cops. So I think the enthusiasm is there, and that speaks to the president’s leadership and our leadership here at the FBI.

What’s the most significant counterintelligence threat domestically right now?

The [People’s Republic of China].

Explain.

The Chinese, particularly the [Chinese Communist Party], engage in the greatest level of espionage against the United States of America. Particularly troubling is how they acquire lands and real estate in and around military bases. Particularly troubling, as you now know, is “Volt Typhoon” — penetration of our telecommunication infrastructure. Particularly troubling is how the Chinese are going after our critical infrastructure systems: our water, our energy, and our electrical grid infrastructure systems. We know they’ve penetrated them. We, the FBI, have been able to produce, in record numbers as I highlighted earlier, counterintelligence arrests for this espionage activity.

Former Director James Comey is being accused of lying to Congress, with DOJ signaling charges. What does this mean for the FBI under President Trump?

This is the only thing we haven’t talked about: the restoration of trust the American public has in the FBI. Don’t take my statistics for it, you know it was cratering. It was at all-time lows over the prior two directors. The restoration of trust comes in my work with Congress: congressional oversight, production of documents, and transparency. That’s a big piece of it. When we produced 33,000 pages on investigations of consequence: everything from JFK to the Charlie Kirk assassination and everything in between. We’re making ongoing productions like never before so the American people can see, touch and feel it, not be told what happened. As for me: I was a victim of a weaponized system of law enforcement, the politicization of law enforcement, literally had subpoenas served on me for no legal basis whatsoever. I will never in this seat launch an investigation without the appropriate legal and factual basis to do so.

Those accusing you of weaponizing the FBI to do the president’s bidding are wrong?

What America should do is look at the people who made those accusations and ask themselves the one simple question the majority of the media doesn’t want to face: Did Russiagate happen? And what happened, what did I uncover when I led that investigation, when I was a chief investigator on Capitol Hill? A political party hired a foreign intelligence asset to make up information, then got it to the FBI. And the FBI knew, and has now admitted, it knew the information was sourced, and the source was bad. Even so, they went to a federal secret court, applied for a warrant on their political opponent, and lied to that federal court to obtain that warrant. If you can’t come to terms with that, then you have no basis to attack our integrity and the leadership I have at the FBI. Look at the individuals who did that. Ask yourself the tough question. The fake news media want to prop these people up and say we’re the ones weaponizing government. It is the height of hypocrisy to accuse us of doing that when they created that maniacal system to satisfy their own egos. They’re just pissed that we figured it out. And the guy who figured it out is now the Director of the FBI. And the Attorney General is a great partner, and she’s right. We’re just warming up.

How do you balance aggressive action against violent extremists with protecting free speech?

Look, it’s simple. We will defend your right to free speech to the maximum extent of the law. If that free speech turns into violent activity, you will be arrested. That’s it. That’s the difference. You can have hateful speech that I don’t agree with, and we see it all the time; we’re victims of it all the time. But that doesn’t make it a violation of the law. That’s how we balance it. We don’t make it personal. We never take it personal.

Your confirmation hearings turned into political theater. If you could do anything differently, what would you clarify?

I wouldn’t do a single thing differently. I would just ask the media to ask their audience: Why can’t the people who continue to attack me understand the basic fact that we have proven they weaponized law enforcement? I don’t know why they call me “dangerous.” Maybe it’s because I am dangerous to their fabricated, weaponized system of government. We are going to bring down the entire diseased temple, and they know that I know what happened. Their best line of attack is to get the fake news to make personal assaults on me. Here’s how I know I’m over the target: the louder they scream, the less factual their points. I know I’m doing my job, and I’m not going anywhere.

What’s your red line to avoid “policing ideology,” and give a current example?

I’m glad you brought this up; it’s one of the most important things we do. We call it nihilistic violent extremism. The main network is called 764. They go online, not just in America; this is a scattered group worldwide, and target our youth. They convince kids to be radicalized, to self-inflict mutilation, and in some cases to kill themselves. I ask state and local authorities across the country for help. The FBI has a 300% increase this year alone in arrests for nihilistic violent extremism, just us. We’re focused on training the rest of the country. I don’t think we’ve missed the mark. In those disastrous situations where parents can’t police where their kids are going online, this is why I tell you: Social media and gaming platforms are wildly out of control. Nobody’s on there; nobody knows what they’re doing.

Should there be penalties for media outlets that publish false, harmful leaks?

One hundred percent. I think there should be the same measure of accountability as if anyone else did it. Congress will decide how to add penalties. At minimum, the American public is owed this: who was responsible for the leaks? I have two or three dozen leak investigations going right now where journalists leaked classified information, possessed national defense information, and put out false information.

What has defamation against you cost, and should others fight or ignore?

I’m blessed to have an amazing family and network, and besides God, they’re the only ones whose opinions I care about. So I’m great there. In terms of my defamation cases, we’ve won some; we’re still litigating the rest. For those watching what we’ve done and the trail we’ve established, I encourage you to stand up and fight for yourself. If you allow organizations and people online to make up information about you and attack you personally, then they win. Anyone who knows me, as you do, knows I don’t bend the knee, and I’m not about to start now.

Should the U.S. formally designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations, or use case-by-case prosecutions to avoid criminalizing ideology?

Yes, we should recognize groups like Antifa for what they are. If we as a society allow these riots to continue, we’ll be engulfed by the criminal activity these people are doing. In L.A., you can’t attack law enforcement and throw rocks and boulders at them. In D.C., you can’t assault law enforcement. In Portland, you can’t set fire to a federal building and get away with it. How is that acceptable? It’s not individual acts of violence; it’s organized anarchy and chaos. Thanks to the president’s initiatives, when I was in the Oval Office when he signed them, we are getting after the fight with more resources and tools than we’ve ever had.

You’ve criticized the Anti-Defamation League as a political front posing as a watchdog. Why?

Look at their glossary, what they use to list as “equivalent to terrorist organizations,” Turning Point USA was on that list, just to name one example. I don’t know why a former director ever partnered with them, except to bandy his name in public and work with lobbyists on K Street. When word got out that I was about to kick the ADL out, the ADL’s lobbyists called this building begging for a phone call. I said “no.” That’s how I knew they were in the wrong the entire time. And we proved it, we put it out for the world to see.

What surprised you most when you took over?

A couple things. One, I was really surprised at how handcuffed our 1811s, our brick agents, were in the field: how many layers of permission they needed to do their basic day-to-day job, how much bureaucracy they had to shoulder. So we eliminated it.

The other shock: nobody planned for this place’s longevity. We’re sitting in a building that’s 60 years old; people have tried to move out for 20 years. We broke through the politics, we’re moving next year to the Reagan Building. We’re saving taxpayers $4 billion in that move, and giving the workforce a safe environment to work in. Why didn’t anyone plan for 20 years? What about infrastructure? What about AI? What about tech? Why isn’t that here systemwide? The great thing is, with our public–private engagements, we’re doing it. We’re bringing in new ideas and innovative ways to triage data with AI. We’re building infrastructure and cyber systems that allow the FBI to talk to everybody at once. Nobody planned for that because it wasn’t the sexy thing to do and didn’t get them headlines. But that’s what we’re doing.

TV shows rave about the FBI crime lab at Quantico. What makes your labs unique?

When a crime happens, take the Charlie Kirk assassination, for example, the FBI’s crime lab at Quantico, and our huge facility at Redstone Arsenal, kick in. Redstone does brilliant explosives training and cyber-kinetic training and brings in our state and local partners. We flew evidence, the gun, the towel, the screwdriver, the ammo, back to our facilities for immediate DNA analysis. We got positive hits and put that out publicly so Americans could see what we were doing. That’s one small example. The FBI lab does DNA analysis, chemical analysis, explosives analysis. Our men and women in the lab would impress you beyond maybe anything else the FBI does, because without them, we couldn’t do this job. The training center we built at Redstone Arsenal is something you should see. It’s a magnificent feature of advanced training, where this FBI should be going and where we’re taking them. Quantico is awesome, but it’s not enough to meet the throughput I need for the 1811 demand the American public requires. So we’re getting creative, and you’re going to see some fun hybrid options going forward.

For critics who say your background doesn’t qualify you to lead the FBI, what do you say? What do you uniquely bring right now?

That’s the best example of disinformation I’ve ever seen. I served in government for 16 years, the Democrats fought to delete that from history. I was a public defender, then a federal public defender. I was a national security prosecutor for the Department of Justice in the Obama administration, chasing down terrorists around the world. I was a civilian at Joint Special Operations Command, embedded with SEAL Team Six and Delta Force, doing collaborative global targeting of high-value targets. I went to Congress and led the most consequential investigation, exposing the largest weaponization of government in U.S. history, Russiagate. Then I went to the White House and ran counterterrorism for the entire country. Then I became the Deputy Director of National Intelligence. Then I became the Chief of Staff to the Department of Defense. I oversaw DoD and our intelligence community and its 16 agencies. If that doesn’t qualify you to be the FBI Director, I don’t know what does. The fact that they’re knocking me and trying to delete it from history tells me I’m more qualified than anyone before me in this seat.