FACT CHECK: Viral X Post Shared By Par­o­dy Account Pos­ing As Kash Patel’s Father

A viral post shared on X pur­ports to show a tweet from Kash Patel’s father con­grat­u­lat­ing him on being nom­i­nat­ed to serve as Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s direc­tor of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (FBI).

When Kashu and Vivek were small they would play togeth­er in the park­ing lot while I was work­ing in the motel

Now Kashu is direc­tor of the FBI and Vivek is help­ing clean up the gov­ern­ment with DOGE

So proud of my son and his friends ❤️ pic.twitter.com/ecQkqdAvVp

— Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. (@ParikPatelCFA) Decem­ber 1, 2024

Ver­dict: False

The claim is false as the account that made the post iden­ti­fies itself as shar­ing par­o­dy con­tent.

Fact Check:

Patel’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions were report­ed­ly tar­get­ed by Iran­ian hack­ers, accord­ing to the Dai­ly Beast, which cit­ed CNN. Patel played a key role in Trump’s efforts against Iran dur­ing his first admin­is­tra­tion, Trump tran­si­tion spokesper­son Alex Pfeif­fer said, the out­let report­ed.

The X post, which has amassed over four mil­lion views as of writ­ing, pur­ports to show a tweet from Patel’s father con­grat­u­lat­ing him on being nom­i­nat­ed to serve as Trump’s FBI direc­tor.

“When Kashu and Vivek [Ramaswamy] were small they would play togeth­er in the park­ing lot while I was work­ing in the motel,” the pur­port­ed post begins. “Now Kashu is direc­tor of the FBI and Vivek is help­ing clean up the gov­ern­ment with DOGE. So proud of my son and his friends,” it con­tin­ues.

The post was shared on X on Decem­ber 1 by social media user @ParikPatelCFA. The social media user’s name is list­ed as Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. via its pro­file.

The claim is false as the account that made the post iden­ti­fies itself as shar­ing par­o­dy con­tent. The account bears a “Par­o­dy, not Invest­ment Advice” label via its bio.

Like­wise, Patel’s father is named Pramod, not Parik, accord­ing to an August 2024 piece pub­lished in The Atlantic. Accord­ing to the same piece, the elder Patel is not a doc­tor but “became CFO at a glob­al dis­trib­u­tor of air­craft bear­ings.”

In addi­tion, Check Your Fact found no cred­i­ble news reports to sup­port the claim. Actu­al­ly, the oppo­site is true. On Decem­ber 4, Reuters report­ed the claim was false, indi­cat­ing it had been shared by the same par­o­dy account. The out­let also cit­ed the same piece from The Atlantic to debunk the claim. (RELATED: Did Joe Biden Smile At A Ques­tion About Par­don­ing Hunter?)

Fur­ther­more, Patel does not appear to have pub­licly com­ment­ed on the claim via his ver­i­fied X account, @Kash_Patel.

Although the post orig­i­nal­ly stems from a par­o­dy account, Newsweek thought the account was legit­i­mate and ref­er­enced one of its posts in a recent arti­cle, accord­ing to the Times of India. Newsweek has since cor­rect­ed the arti­cle.