The tip came in on an encrypted messaging app: a longtime source told New York-based investigative reporter Jim Mustian that FBI Director Kash Patel’s summer trip to New Zealand to open a new legal attaché office included a problem that had not been made public — Patel had gifted officials inoperable 3D-printed pistols that were illegal to possess.
New Zealand and South Pacific reporter Charlotte Graham-McLay began working her sources, and within days not only exclusively confirmed the story but secured detailed, on-record statements from the country’s intelligence and law enforcement officials.
It was a particular coup for the AP because the visit by Patel — the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit New Zealand so far — and the opening of the new FBI office in Wellington had only been disclosed to news outlets and the public after the fact, with no media access to proceedings.
Graham-McLay and Mustian, tapping into AP’s unmatched global reach, quickly pulled together an international exclusive that revealed Patel’s gifts of the plastic 3D-printed replica pistols to three senior New Zealand security officials. The following day, Graham-McLay confirmed with political sources that the guns had also been gifted to two Cabinet ministers. She used her extensive knowledge of New Zealand’s strict gun laws — bolstered after a white supremacist massacre at two mosques in 2019 — to explain to an international audience why Patel’s gifts hadn’t been legal and why the recipients had surrendered the pistols to be destroyed.
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