Senator Schmitt Invites FBI Director Patel to Kansas City to Discuss Crime-Fighting Efforts, Urges FBI to Continue Focus on Kansas City

Invite Follows Director Patel’s Recent Visit to St. Louis, FBI’s Historic Personnel Investment in both St. Louis and Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, MO — U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel inviting him to Kansas City to continue discussing collaborative ways to strengthen crime-fighting efforts in the region.

This invite follows a successful visit to St. Louis, where Senator Schmitt, FBI Director Patel, and FBI Co-Deputy Director Andrew Bailey celebrated the FBI’s historic investment into the region and provide an update on Operation Summer Heat. In August 2025, Senator Schmitt announced that he secured one of the largest per-capita increases of full-time agents and intelligence personnel in the country for St. Louis. This infusion strengthened crime-fighting capabilities and brought staffing levels at FBI St. Louis to the highest level in years.

Senator Schmitt began: “Thank you for visiting St. Louis, Missouri, on November 21st, addressing the field office, and leading a law enforcement roundtable with several dozen leaders from state and local law enforcement. The FBI’s permanent infusion of full-time agents and intelligence personnel to the St. Louis Field Office, one of the largest per-capita increases in the nation, will be instrumental in promoting law and order in the area. The FBI’s increased efforts under your leadership to combat violent crime has already begun to improve the lives of St. Louis’s citizens.”

Senator Schmitt wrote: “I write to invite you to visit Kansas City, Missouri, to tour and address the FBI Kansas City Field Office, and to discuss how the FBI and the Trump Administration are tackling violent crime in the Kansas City metropolitan area following your commendable May 2025 decision to relocate 33 positions out of Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, as I advocated for earlier this year.”

Senator Schmitt continued: “Next year, Kansas City will serve as a host city for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, playing an important role in hosting matches, welcoming international fans, and serving as a midpoint hub for soccer fans traveling across the country to attend games. More importantly, the Kansas City metropolitan area is home to more 2.2 million Americans, including over 1.3 million Missourians. They deserve to live in a community free from the blight of unchecked violent crime. America is only as strong as its Heartland. For too long, Washington’s elites have focused primarily on our large coastal cities and neglected that truth.”

Senator Schmitt concluded: “I am deeply grateful for your tireless work to Make America Safe Again. To that end, I invite you to Kansas City in the new year to discuss successes over the past year and how we can continue and build upon this focus and commitment to Kansas City. Under your leadership, the FBI is uniquely positioned to play an organizing and leading role in collaborative violent crime interdiction efforts between federal, state, and local partners. Just last week, FBI KC played a pivotal role in the multi-agency “Operation Brightside” in Columbia, Missouri. Together with state and local law enforcement leaders, we can chart the course for collaborative multilateral crime-fighting efforts in the years ahead—just as we did in St. Louis.”

Read the full letter HERE.

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