FBI director gifts illegal replica pistols to New Zealand spy chiefs

FBI Director Kash Patel presented senior New Zealand security officials with gifts of inoperable replica pistols during a recent visit, which were subsequently deemed illegal under local gun laws and had to be destroyed.

The plastic, 3D-printed pistols were part of display stands given to at least three high-ranking New Zealand police and intelligence chiefs in July.

Patel, the most senior official from the Trump administration to visit the country, was in the capital, Wellington, to inaugurate the FBI’s first dedicated office in New Zealand.

Under New Zealand legislation, pistols are highly restricted weapons, requiring a specific permit beyond a standard gun licence.

While it remains unclear if the recipient officials held such permits, they would have been legally unable to retain the gifts without them.

Questions also remain regarding what permissions Patel sought to import the weapons into the country. A spokesperson said on Tuesday that the FBI would not be providing a comment on the matter.

Inoperable weapons are treated as though they’re operable in New Zealand if modifications could make them workable again. The pistols were judged by gun regulators to be potentially operable and were destroyed, New Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said.

Chambers didn’t specify how the weapons had been rendered inoperable before Patel gifted them. Usually this means the temporary disabling of the gun’s firing mechanism.

Three of New Zealand’s most powerful law enforcement figures said they received the gifts at meetings July 31. Chambers was one recipient, and the other two were Andrew Hampton, Director-General of the country’s human intelligence agency NZSIS, and Andrew Clark, Director-General of the technical intelligence agency GCSB, according to a joint statement from their departments.

A spokesperson for the spy agencies described the gift as “a challenge coin display stand” that included the 3D-printed inoperable weapon “as part of the design.” The officials sought advice on the gifts the next day from the regulator that enforces New Zealand’s gun laws, Chambers said.

When the weapons were examined, it was discovered they were potentially operable.

“To ensure compliance with firearms laws, I instructed Police to retain and destroy them,” Chambers said.

James Davidson, a former FBI agent who is now president of the FBI Integrity Project, a nonprofit that seeks to safeguard the bureau from undue partisan influence, has criticized Patel’s appointment.

But Davidson said the gift of the replica pistols appeared “a genuine gesture” from Patel and their destruction was “quite frankly, an overreaction by the NZSIS, which could have simply rendered the replica inoperable,” he said.

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