(WASHINGTON) — Newly-installed FBI Director Kash Patel, whose proclaimed plans to overhaul the nation’s premier law enforcement agency have rattled many within the bureau, has proposed enhancing the FBI’s ranks with help from the United Fighting Championship, the martial-arts entertainment giant whose wealthy CEO, Dana White, helped boost President Donald Trump’s reelection, according to sources who were told of Patel’s proposal.
On a teleconference Wednesday with the heads of the FBI’s 55 field offices, Patel suggested that he wants the FBI to establish a formal relationship with the UFC, which could develop programs for agents to improve their physical fitness, said sources who had been briefed on Wednesday’s call.
The virtual meeting with each field office’s special-agent-in-charge has long been a weekly occurrence, but this week’s call was the first led by Patel, who was sworn in as director on Friday.
Within hours of Wednesday’s call, word of Patel’s UFC proposal spread to current and former FBI officials around the country.
“If they’re trying to up their physical fitness, the UFC is very specific in their fitness,” said ABC News contributor Rich Frankel, the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark, New Jersey, office.
It’s not clear exactly what Patel would want UFC to do or provide to help improve fitness among FBI ranks.
Though Patel’s UFC proposal stood out to some who heard about the meeting, Patel addressed a range of issues on the call, according to sources.
The new director tried to calm some of the concerns among FBI agents after the Justice Department last month demanded a list of the thousands of agents who aided investigations stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and suggested that even those just following orders could be fired, the sources said.
There were also concerns about Patel’s recent announcement that as many as 1,500 employees at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C, would be reassigned to field offices and to an FBI office in Huntsville, Alabama. And last week’s controversial email from the Office of Personnel Management demanding that all federal employees list what they had accomplished over the previous week or face termination only added to concerns within the FBI, sources said.
During Wednesday’s call, Patel expressed his own concerns about that email and with confusing follow-up messages from the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency, which has been guided by billionaire businessman Elon Musk, sources said.
Patel, on the call, also touted the FBI’s work fighting crime and national security threats, and he asked the FBI officials to give him a chance to prove himself as their new leader, sources said. But he also warned them that he would not tolerate “leaks” or what he sees as other forms of insubordination.
Nevertheless, it was Patel’s proposal to ask the UFC for help that quickly created some buzz within the FBI community. UFC is based in Las Vegas, where Patel now lives.
White, who is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has long been friends with Trump and last year became a big donor to Trump’s presidential campaign. He joined Trump on stage in Florida during Trump’s victory speech in November just hours after polls closed on Election Day.
During the speech, Trump recalled how he “helped [White] out a little bit” years earlier when no one else was willing to host UFC fights, claiming that UFC is now “one of the most successful sports enterprises anywhere at any time.”
Trump also said that UFC “is the roughest sport I’ve ever seen,” featuring fighters who “really go at it.”
Just days after Trump won the election in November, Trump attended a heavily-promoted UFC fight at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where he sat in the front row between White and Musk.
Frankel, who spent more than two decades with the FBI, said the FBI may benefit from increasing its physical fitness standards — so the idea of the UFC helping with the FBI’s training regimen may not be as unusual as it sounds.
He said some FBI offices have previously brought in martial arts experts and others to offer tips to agents.
But, said Frankel, “I don’t want UFC to take over the gym.”
Asked about Patel’s proposal to collaborate with the UFC, an FBI representative declined to comment to ABC News.
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