Was Alexis Wilkins holding another man's hand at WHCD? Kash Patel's girlfriend responds to ‘sick’ report
Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, has publicly pushed back against claims surrounding her conduct during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD). She called the New York Times report that alleged Wilkins was seen holding another man’s hand amid a chaotic security situation at the event, “sick.”
Wilkins, a country singer who has been in a relationship with Patel since 2023, strongly denied the claim and said that she was only with Patel and close associates during the WHCD shooting incident. She further accused media coverage of pushing a damaging narrative and said that the reporting was inaccurate.
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“I was only ever holding Kash’s hand; anything to suggest otherwise is false.”
A New York Times White House correspondent described the “commotion” that broke out at the Washington Hilton last Saturday night on the live blog of his publication.
According to the initial version of his post, Alexis Wilkins “was hiding in a room with another man who was holding her hand.” He described that the “hand-holding” happened when the country singer’s boyfriend, Patel, “came tearing across the hallway with two men in tow,” during the rescue process at the WHCD.
In an interview with the Daily Mail that was released on Wednesday, Wilkins called NYT’s reporting “salacious” and criticized The New York Times for their “weird refusal to fully admit they were wrong.”
She said, “I was only ever holding Kash’s hand; anything to suggest otherwise is false. It is sick for the New York Times to have used this time after a perceived active shooting as a political tool. They will stop at nothing to push a narrative out that’s damaging to people they’ve determined they dislike.”
She added, “You say someone’s holding someone’s hand in another room, you know exactly what you’re implying. They have the wherewithal to know that.”
She also clarified that she “never held anyone’s hand” and that she and Patel were not in different holding rooms. “The thing that’s really interesting about all of this is that never happened at all,” she said.
“I was never in a different holding room outside of the holding room that I was in with Kash. I was sitting there with the acting attorney general and his wife, Kristine, and never held anyone’s hand,” she added.
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The New York Times corrected the original post
The outlet claimed that the breaking news events of the evening, such as Wilkins taking refuge in a room while holding a security officer’s hand, were appropriately reported by the NYT correspondent present at the Correspondents’ Dinner.
The New York Times, which originally published the account, later added context but stood by its reporting.
They changed the reporting to say that Wilkins was holding hands with someone who “appeared to be a member of a security detail.”