On a visit to New Zealand, FBI Director Kash Patel gave the country's police and spy bosses gifts of inoperable pistols that were illegal to possess under local gun laws and had to be destroyed, New Zealand law enforcement agencies tell the AP. The plastic 3D-printed replica pistols formed part of display stands Patel presented to at least three senior New Zealand security officials in July. Patel, the most senior Trump administration official to visit the country so far, was in Wellington to open the FBI's first stand-alone office in New Zealand. Pistols are tightly restricted weapons under New Zealand law, and possessing one requires an additional permit beyond a regular gun license.
It wasn't clear what permissions Patel had sought to bring the weapons into the country. A spokesperson said Tuesday the FBI wouldn't comment. Inoperable weapons are treated as though they're operable in New Zealand if modifications could make them workable again. The pistols were judged by gun regulators to be potentially operable and were destroyed, New Zealand Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said Tuesday. Chambers didn't specify how the weapons had been rendered inoperable before Patel gifted them; usually that means the temporary disabling of the gun's firing mechanism.
Three of New Zealand's most powerful law enforcement figures said they received the gifts at meetings on July 31. Chambers was one, and the other two were Andrew Hampton, director-general of the country's human intelligence agency NZSIS, and Andrew Clark, director-general of the technical intelligence agency GCSB, according to a joint statement from their departments. A rep for the spy agencies described the gift as "a challenge coin display stand" that included the 3D-printed inoperable weapon "as part of the design." The officials sought advice on the gifts the next day from the regulator that enforces New Zealand's gun laws. The weapons were found to be potentially operable. "To ensure compliance with firearms laws, I instructed police to retain and destroy them," Chambers said.
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James Davidson, a former FBI agent who's now president of the FBI Integrity Project, a nonprofit that seeks to safeguard the bureau from undue partisan influence, has criticized Patel's appointment. But Davidson said the gift of the replica pistols appeared to be "a genuine gesture" from Patel, and their destruction was, "quite frankly, an overreaction by the NZSIS, which could have simply rendered the replica inoperable," he said.
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