Donald Trump ally and FBI Director Kash Patel will lead the agency’s mission to Russia. He will become the first FBI chief to visit Russia since Robert Mueller’s trip to Moscow in 2013, less than a year before the Kremlin’s relations with Western countries deteriorated, according to The Times.

“It will be an ‘unusual and delicate’ trip that will be closely watched in Russia,” the article notes. The authors mean that the American delegation in St. Petersburg and Moscow will likely be hosted by FSB officers. The trip is scheduled for October 13–14.

As the publication notes, it is still unclear whether Patel plans to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and senior Kremlin officials.

The article mentions that last year Patel found himself at the center of a scandal when it emerged that he received $25,000 for participating in a 2024 documentary about an alleged anti-Trump conspiracy, made by a U.S.-Russian citizen who had previously received funding from a Moscow-linked foundation. In the film, All the President’s Men: The Conspiracy Against Trump, Patel says in the script that he dreams of shutting down FBI headquarters and reopening it “as a museum of the deep state.”

Also in 2022, Patel released a children’s book, The Plot Against the King, mocking the investigation into alleged collusion between Trump’s first presidential campaign and the Kremlin. At the end of the book, in the guise of a wizard, he declares that “King Donald” is innocent.