Ex-FBI agent turned podcaster 'intentionally' and 'unsafely' fired gun before he was ousted: memos

An ex-FBI agent turned provocative podcaster was kicked out of the bureau after he "intentionally" discharged his weapon in an "unsafe manner" on a training range while his instructor was in the line of fire, according to the bureau's incident report obtained by Just the News and congressional testimony that challenges his self-portrayal as a whistleblower who faced retaliation.

The records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and from court files, show Kyle Matthew Seraphin was "permanently suspended" from the FBI on June 1,2022, just eight weeks after the alleged incident at a New Mexico gun range on April 1, 2022. The incident was deemed so reckless that he was referred to FBI internal affairs, the documents show.

Seraphin acknowledged to Just the News in an interview last year that he was "dicking around" when he fired his weapon at his supervisor's target at the range in 2022, but he insisted the incident should not have led to his suspension and termination and that he believes he was a victim of whistleblower retaliation.

He has leveraged his story as an alleged whistleblower who exposed anti-Catholic bias and resisted the FBI's vaccine mandate under former Director Christopher Wray to a popular anti-bureau podcast where he fashions himself as one of the bureau's "suspendables," a group of agents whose security clearances were suspended.

His notoriety has also landed him in a defamation lawsuit brought by current FBI Director Kash Patel's girlfriend, whom he accused on his podcast of being an Israeli Mossad "honeypot." His portrayal as a whistleblower is front and center in his defense motion to dismiss that litigation.

"Between late 2021 and late 2022, Mr. Seraphin gained national notoriety as a 'whistleblower' for refusing to participate in the FBI's mandatory vaccine policy and what he alleged to be potential perjury by Attorney General Merrick Garland," his motion to dismiss declares.

You can read that motion, here: 

Remarkably, his own lawyers put the word whistleblower in quote marks in that court document. 

FBI documents tell another side to his story

The documents obtained by Just the News tell a different story about alleged recklessness with a gun that led to his separation from the FBI after just six years as an agent.

Just the News asked for all records of FBI agents in New Mexico who discharged a weapon between 2015 and 2025 after Seraphin recounted two gun incidents he claimed to be involved in as an agent. The FBI provided 20 documents chronicling 15 incidents, including an agent who accidentally shot himself in the foot and one who accidentally shot toward her neighbor's house while cleaning her gun.

You can read the FBI documents below: 

Seraphin's gun range incident was the only report in the release to claim a gun was fired both intentionally and unsafely.

The actual documents redacted Seraphin's name, but Just the News confirmed from people familiar with the original incident that the report about the alleged April 1, 2022, incident at the New Mexico gun range involved the podcaster.

The incident report spared few words in describing Seraphin's alleged misconduct during "a quarterly firearms qualification" event for agents in the Albuquerque office. "During a training event, SA [redacted] discharged one round from his Colt-Pattem carbine while the firearms instructor was in front of the firing line," the report stated.

"SA [redacted] failed to adhere to the Cardinal Safety Rule of never pointing your firearm at anyone unless you are justified, in violation of the Firearms Policy Guide," the report added.

The report places the date of the incident as April 1, 2022, but said it was not reported to FBI internal affairs until April 18, 2022.

Questioned about the document by Just the News, Serapahin responded by text that the memo "doesn't look familiar" and he insisted he "last qualified on Mar. 4, 2022" as he called into question the dates in the FBI official report.

The documents obtained under FOIA also track closely the congressional testimony of a former top FBI executive about the same episode.

House testimony alleged unsafe weapons handling, threatening behavior and leaking sensitive information

During testimony before the House Judiciary Committee more than two years ago, former FBI Executive Assistant Director of Human Resources Jennifer Leigh Moore told lawmakers that Seraphin’s security clearance suspension stemmed from violations of the safe weapons-handling policy, threatening behavior, and the unauthorized release of sensitive information. 

“In his specific case, the mishandling of the weapon was that they were at a firearms range [...] the firearms instructor had called for the line to be holstered safe,” Moore said, describing the incident as central to the suspension of Seraphin’s security clearance.  

Moore added: “And they check, everybody confirms, everybody's holstered safe. The firearms instructor then announces that he is moving forward to fix a broken target. As he moved forward, Kyle Seraphin pulled his gun, shot across the range diagonal in front of the firearms instructor as he moved forward to fix the target and shot at the target he was going to fix.” 

Moore told lawmakers that such behavior, which she called “threatening and intimidating,” was unacceptable in the FBI. “It shows a complete misunderstanding of rules and safety. Again, it goes to his whole-person concept as well,” she said. 

Moore originally worked on Seraphin’s security clearance review before she had to recuse herself in the midst of the investigation, because, she says, Seraphin made a comment about her and another female executive that could be viewed as threatening, or at the least inappropriate. 

“Additionally, I had to be recused because Mr. Seraphin expressed his desire to use me as a target,” Moore testified. “He communicated with another FBI employee who provided us those communications. And in that, he specifically indicated that he wanted to use me and another female executive as targets.” 

Moore was asked to appear before Congress in April 2023 as part of its probe into allegations the FBI had used security clearance reviews as a means of retaliating against whistleblowers.

Moore, who confirmed she oversaw all security clearance reviews, repeatedly insisted during her testimony that the process was never used as a “punitive” action for blowing the whistle. 

“The FBI does not use a suspension as a punitive measure ever,” Moore testified. “It is only utilized in national security matters.”

“The FBI takes whistleblowers very seriously,” she later added. “We encourage our employees and actually require them to report waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct. We absolutely appreciate a whistleblower.”

You can read her testimony below: 

Seraphin: "They drummed it up."

Seraphin disputed Moore’s testimony and description of the firearms incident in question in an interview with Just the News. 

“Complete fantasy, not something that ever happened,” he said of Moore’s account. Seraphin said the incident was innocuous, but that it was exploited by FBI leadership to punish him for blowing the whistle. He called it a “bad game of telephone” and that “because I was a whistle-blower, they drummed it up.” 

Seraphin said that he and other agents were conducting firing drills on a range east of Las Cruces, New Mexico, at the White Sands missile range. He told Just the News that he fired on the instructor’s target while the range was still “hot”— meaning shooting was ongoing. This conflicts with Moore’s testimony that the instructor had called for guns to be “holstered safe” before the incident. 

Asked why he fired on the instructor’s target during the incident, Seraphin said it is sometimes what you do when you are “dicking around” with friends on the range.

Individuals who were briefed on the incident and who worked with Seraphin in New Mexico remember it differently. 

An individual recently interviewed by the FBI said that the firearms instructor made “everyone step back” from the range to give instructions when Seraphin “pulled out his gun and fired in the direction of the targets," according to a summary reviewed by Just the News. At the time, he said, the instructor was standing in between Seraphin and the targets. 

The individual described the behavior as “unsafe, negligent, breaks the rules” and the individual believed that Seraphin had no intention of harming the instructor, but that he fired his weapon to show off.

A former colleague, a senior agent who worked in New Mexico with Seraphin, separately told Just the News that Seraphin would frequently unholster his gun inside the office, making unarmed support staff particularly uncomfortable. The agent, who was not on the range during the aforementioned incident, said several eyewitnesses reported immediately that Seraphin had fired his weapon while the range was cold and the instructor was in between him and the targets. 

'Intentionally and unsafely discharged his weapon'

The following year, the FBI Inspection Division sent a summary of the incident to the Shooting Incident Review Group as a follow-up to the internal affairs review. That memo shows that investigators determined "Agent [redacted] intentionally and unsafely discharged his weapon when another agent was in front of him on the firing line at the range." 

Seraphin has framed his suspension from the FBI as retaliation for blowing the whistle on abuses in the bureau during a media appearance with investigative journalist James O’Keefe III, then at Project Veritas. After the suspension, Seraphin provided an internal memo from the FBI Richmond Field Office on “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology” to The Daily Signal. 

Seraphin, who was an early supporter of Trump’s choice to helm the FBI, Kash Patel, has now grown increasingly critical of Patel's leadership, including Patel's use of an FBI jet. 

Previous gun incident: Target practice near federal land and a school

Seraphin said he took personal leave from the FBI starting in 2021 in objection to the Biden administration’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies. During this time, he was stopped by a law enforcement officer in Las Cruces, New Mexico, engaging in target practice near federal land and a school. 

Seraphin previously posted the body-worn camera footage from the Las Cruces incident and said the land was often used by the public for target practice. The Las Cruces, N.M., Police Department did not offer a comment when asked by Just the News.

Provocative Seraphin podcast causes whistleblower group to drop Friend as client

Another of the “suspendables,” former FBI agent Steve Friend, also had a falling out with Patel last year. Friend contends that his public comments directed at Patel led to his firing from the bureau just months after his security clearance had been reinstated, stemming from critical comments he made on Seraphin’s podcast. The comments were deemed to be a threat against Patel, The New York Post reported. 

“You better pray to Gaia or Vishnu or whatever your maker is, that the real Steve Friend is never in a position to be an instrument of God’s wrath, because I will be merciful: I won’t give you a trial and a hanging,” he told The Kyle Seraphin Show on Dec. 5. He reportedly said to Patel in the podcast, “I’ll allow you to breathe every breath that your body will have for the rest of its natural life inside of a box, and then when it ultimately fades to black, that’s when real wrath begins.”

Friend made these comments while accusing the FBI of covering up the "true" story behind the Jan. 6 attempted pipe bombing, alleging the bureau arrested suspect Brian Cole Jr. as an elaborate “coverup.” 

The whistleblower group representing Friend, Empower Oversight, dropped him as a client on the same day he made the comments on Seraphin’s podcast. Empower Oversight won settlements from Patel and the Trump DOJ for Friend and other suspended agents earlier this year.