A bit of gotcha detective work by U.S. Senate Democrats blew up in their faces on Tuesday after Republican colleagues pointed out that FBI Director Kash Patel was adhering to federal regulations when he took a private jet on multiple occasions for personal travel.

Patel’s jet-setting was a topic of discussion in a recent New York Times story alleging that dysfunction in the FBI is occurring under his leadership. Reporters, speaking with anonymous sources, insinuated that Patel may have flouted ethics laws when he chartered a private jet to attend an NFL game where he sat next to Wayne Gretzky and on a second occasion when he flew to a UFC fight where President Donald Trump was also in attendance.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Dick Durbin (D-IL), flagged the Times story in an explosive social media post on Monday morning.

“BREAKING: New reporting finds apparent misuse of government dollars by Kash Patel, using government resources to attend hockey games and a UFC match,” the committee’s social media account stated.

The accusation glosses over an unassailable requirement that the FBI’s director relies on government planes to take personal travel, the Times story notes.

“Directors must fly on government aircraft for their travel because of required access to secure communications equipment,” it reads.

Patel, the report goes on, must reimburse the government for the cost of a commercial ticket to and from the destination, far less than the cost of operating a privet jet. The story’s authors also point to three private trips the FBI director has taken to visit his girlfriend, a country singer in Nashville, Tennessee.

An FBI spokesperson replied “all ethical guidelines are rigorously followed” when asked about whether Patel is adhering to the letter of the law.

The discrepancies apparently weren’t missed by eagle-eyed readers of the story, who chastised Sen. Durbin and other Judiciary Committee Democrat for wasting their time with bogus allegations of law-breaking by Patel when it was Sen. Chris Van Hollen who most recently used taxpayer dollars to mount an ill-fated trip to El Salvador in order to spring from prison a Maryland illegal alien accused of being an MS-13 gang member.

“Really reaching after a trip to El Salvador was expensed,” one X user replied.

Another chimed in, “Meanwhile, Democrats are misusing funds violating the Logan Act while they stand in El Salvador trying to bring back a foreign terrorist into this Country.”

The Times story enflamed tensions between Patel, Deputy Dan Bongino, and disgruntled anti-Trump agents who whispered salacious stories to the outlet, including one about Bongino allegedly losing a sparring match with a jiu-jitsu-trained special agent. The anecdote prompted Bongino to issue a visceral rebuke of the story’s author the night before it was published.

Patel has not yet acknowledged the story as of Tuesday, apart from reposting Bongino’s earlier salvo. His social media pages are on message, touting the arrest of criminal illegal immigrants and successful raids in partnership with agents from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement.

“Together with our law enforcement partners, we are actively working to identify, disrupt, and dismantle their networks. We will not allow foreign-backed criminal organizations to take root in our communities,” reads part of a recent post by the director.