AG Brenna Bird, with FBI Director Kash Patel, speaks on collaboration with feds

Iowa law enforcement and county attorneys met with Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel to speak about how local entities can work with federal partners to tackle scams, drug trafficking and other crimes with international ties, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told reporters Monday.

Patel met with more than 130 local and state law enforcement officials Monday in Des Moines for a law enforcement leadership meeting. While the event was not open to the press, Bird and other Iowa leaders spoke to reporters Monday about the event, which she said was “the first time, that I know of in my memory, that we’ve had the FBI director here in Iowa meeting with all levels of law enforcement leadership.”

At the meeting, Bird said, Patel spoke with law enforcement about some of the FBI focuses that are impacting local communities in states including Iowa.

“We talked about the FBI focus on stopping human trafficking and what we can do to work together on that, whether it’s the progress they’ve made with child trafficking, labor trafficking, sex trafficking — those are very important cases that we all want to work together on,” Bird said. “We also talked about illegal drugs, drug trafficking, the reduction in fentanyl and fentanyl deaths, and the drug networks. And then we touched upon the problem of scams and frauds, and their links to transnational criminal organizations, and how we can work with the FBI to stop those scams and to hold those people accountable.”

Waukee Police Chief Chad McCluskey, president of the Iowa Police Chiefs Association, said he was excited to learn about potential partnerships with the FBI on working on getting money back to individuals who are scammed.

“Anybody that has been scammed, especially with parent or grandparent or somebody, you feel horrible, and you want to be able to get those funds back to them,” McCluskey said. “And if we can find a path to do that through (the FBI and) Attorney General Bird’s office, and we can maybe start to help get some of those monies back where they belong. That would be great, and it’d be huge for us.”

Bird said the FBI has made “tremendous” strides in locating transnational organizations that take money from Americans.

“We are talking today about how we could work together to recover some of that money, and give it back to the victim that it was taken from,” Bird said. “It is very difficult. Many times, this is in a foreign crypto wallet, sometimes in Southeast Asia, for example. But today we were talking about ways that we could work together, follow those cases, follow those threads, and try to get the money back to the person that it was taken from. It won’t be easy, but this kind of partnership is so valuable to the people that we all serve, because we all care about getting scam victims their money back.”

Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Stephan Bayens said this work will build on efforts to address scams already being conducted in the state, including a central Iowa law enforcement working group on scams. He said sharing information through these working groups helps local and state law enforcement identify a “nefarious actor” — and that bringing in the FBI will allow them to pursue justice it situations where the scammer is outside the U.S., “because they have that kind of jurisdictional reach, kind of both nationally and internationally.”

While Patel did not speak with media, he thanked Bird and other Iowa officials for the meeting in a social media post on X Monday, where he wrote “Iowa is ground zero for our work with partners in the most successful run of crime reduction in U.S. history – with major crime reductions across the state including a 30%+ drop in Des Moines homicides last year alone.”

In a news release from the Iowa Attorney General’s office, Patel said “partnerships across the country are more critical than ever to this FBI.”

“Law enforcement continues to set records crushing violent crime, wiping out drug trafficking networks, and defending the homeland from threats abroad – and those victories are only possible with the men and women on the front lines working 24/7 in Iowa and beyond,” Patel said in a statement. “I’m honored to join Attorney General Bird and our great partners in Iowa as we work together on our shared priorities and continue making America the safest we’ve been in generations.”

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart criticized Bird on Monday for “cozying up to the Trump administration and trying to raise her national profile by welcoming Kash Patel to Iowa” through the event.

“Patel has grossly mismanaged the FBI as its director, including using government resources for lavish personal trips, demanding political loyalty from staff, and prematurely revealing sensitive information on national security investigations,” Hart said in a statement. “Like Patel, Brenna Bird has been more focused on using her position and taxpayer dollars to push her own extreme political agenda instead of protecting Iowans.”

The FBI has said Patel’s visit to Hawaii, which included a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, in coordination with the military, “was part of the Director’s public national security engagements last August with counterparts in New Zealand, Australia, our Honolulu Field Office, and the Department of War,” according to reporting from the Associated Press. Patel has also denied reports that he had required staff to take polygraph examinations.