On Wednesday, bombshell news broke that former President Joe Biden’s FBI had obtained phone records on current FBI Director Kash Patel and former White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in 2022 and 2023 when they were private citizens.
That led to the FBI firing 10 employees.
So how much time did ABC, CBS, NBC devote to these developments in the lawfare case waged against President Donald Trump and his administration?
Zero seconds.
MRC analysts looked at the morning and evening shows from February 25 (when Reuters first broke the story) through the morning of February 27 and found Big Three broadcast networks completely ignored the story.
On Thursday (Feb. 26) @FNC's @FaulknerFocus breaks down Biden's FBI spying on Kash Patel and Susie Wiles pic.twitter.com/ezMlGxnGFP
— Geoffrey Dickens (@GCDickens) February 27, 2026
A story involving Patel that all three networks DID cover this week was Patel celebrating with Team USA’s hockey team after their gold-medal victory at the Olympics.
From February 23 through the evening of February 27 there were five mentions of Patel hanging out with Team USA for a total of 215 seconds aired on ABC (129 seconds), CBS (52 seconds), NBC (34 seconds).
Most of the coverage took a snide tone. On the February 23 edition of ABC’s Good Morning America, correspondent Pierre Thomas reported: “FBI director Kash Patel was in Italy during the Olympics when the incident happened. This video shows him in the locker room celebrating with the U.S. Men’s hockey team after they won the gold medal. Right there chugging a beer….Critics citing the elevated threat environment, the kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie’s mother, and ongoing tensions with Iran, calling the entire trip a boondoggle at taxpayers' expense.” Anchor Robin Roberts huffed: “Many feel that way.”
However, those same networks have buried the shocking revelation of Biden’s abuse of the FBI to surveil then-private citizens Patel and Wiles.
On February 26, The Blaze did a good round-up of the story:
The FBI has reportedly fired a slew of employees at the direction of Dir. Kash Patel following his revelation to Reuters on Wednesday that the bureau obtained phone records for him and for White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in 2022 and 2023 while they were private citizens. Four individuals briefed on the terminations — more of which are expected — told CNN that the approximately 10 newly fired FBI employees were involved in the lawfare waged against President Donald Trump over retention of government documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,” Patel said in a statement.
According to Patel, operatives of the Biden FBI, led by then-Director Christopher Wray, not only obtained “toll records” for his and Wiles’ private phone calls, as it had with Republican lawmakers in Operation Arctic Frost, but attempted to hide that they had done so in requesting court approval.
An individual with knowledge of the situation told the New York Times that some of the fired FBI employees — reportedly including support personnel, agents, and supervisors — were involved in that effort. Toll records provide investigators with identifying information of callers along with the date, time, location, and length of a call.
Reuters, citing two FBI officials, reported that in at least one instance, the bureau sought more than just toll records and taped a call between Wiles and her attorney in 2023. While Wiles’attorney was reportedly aware that the call was being recorded and provided consent, Wiles was allegedly unaware.
Wiles told associates, “I am in shock,” reported Axios.
Biden’s FBI surveilling Patel and Wiles while they were private citizens seems like a big story the networks should cover, but apparently, they’re too busy covering Patel chugging beers with Team USA.
For this study, MRC analysts looked at the broadcast evening (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News), morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, NBC Today) from February 23 through the morning of February 27.
