Kash Patel: Ryan Wedding’s capture boosts Trump’s crackdown on crime

FBI Director Kash Patel on Friday praised the company’s seize of Olympic fugitive King Ryan Wedding ceremony, calling the seize vital to the FBI’s broader crime-fighting success underneath President Donald Trump.

Patel confirmed that Wedding ceremony, 44, was taken into custody in Mexico on Thursday night as a part of a multi-agency operation involving Mexican authorities, the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace, the Los Angeles Police Division and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The FBI introduced Friday that that they had captured former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding ceremony after a months-long manhunt. (FBI)

Wedding ceremony was the sixth fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wished checklist to be captured underneath Patel’s tenure.

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“To place that in perspective, that is two greater than your complete earlier administration, and none of this might be attainable with out the good management of Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi and the Division of Justice and our companions and prosecutors on the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace right here in LA and our area workplace in Los Angeles,” Patel mentioned.

Wedding ceremony, 44, was positioned on the FBI Ten Most Wished checklist in March 2025 and is accused of operating a transnational drug trafficking community that “routinely shipped a whole bunch of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, by means of Mexico and Southern California, to Canada and different areas in the US,” the FBI mentioned.

He’s additionally accused of orchestrating a number of murders and tried murders as a part of his drug trafficking operation.

“Simply to say how dangerous Ryan Wedding ceremony is, he went from an Olympic snowboarder to the largest drug trafficker of recent occasions,” Patel mentioned at a information convention on the tarmac of Ontario Worldwide Airport on Friday. ‘He is a modern-day El Chapo. He’s a modern-day Pablo Escobar, and he thought he may keep away from justice.”

Ryan Wedding ceremony, needed by the FBI, was seen practising for the boys’s parallel big slalom of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics in Park Metropolis, February 13, 2002. (FBI | REUTERS/Jeff J Mitchell)

WANTED EX-OLYMPIAN RYAN WEDDING GIVEN IN MEXICO, FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL FLYS HIM BACK TO US

“This particular person and his group and the Sinaloa Cartel have poured narcotics into the streets of North America and killed too a lot of our youth and corrupted too a lot of our residents. And that’s the place immediately ends.”

Patel known as 2025 a “historic 12 months” for the FBI, noting that the bureau has made 67,000 arrests this 12 months alone — a 200% improve over earlier years.

“The FBI captured six of the highest ten [Wanted] fugitives in our authorities. The FBI has additionally seized sufficient fentanyl to kill 150 million People, a 31% improve. The FBI has arrested 35% extra corrupt spy actors from China, Russia, the Democratic Folks’s Republic of Korea and Iran. The FBI has discovered and recognized 6,000 lacking youngsters. That is a rise of twenty-two%. All of those historic file numbers result in a brand new historic file quantity delivered to you by President Trump’s management. That could be a 20% lower within the murder fee in the US of America.”

FBI Director Kash Patel speaks throughout a press convention in regards to the arrest of former Olympian Ryan Wedding ceremony on costs of multinational drug trafficking. The press convention occurred in Ontario, California, on Friday, January 23, 2026. (Amy Taxin/AP Picture)

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Akil Davis, deputy director of the FBI, mentioned 36 individuals have already been arrested in reference to Wedding ceremony’s alleged crime ring. He famous that along with medication, money and weapons, Wedding ceremony’s tens of millions in bikes, jewellery and invaluable paintings had been additionally seized by authorities.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell added that as a part of their efforts to arrest Wedding ceremony, “greater than 20,300 kilos of cocaine, 44 kilos of methamphetamine, 44 kilos of fentanyl, eight firearms and greater than $55 million in unlawful property” had been seized by the division.

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Patel mentioned the fees that led to Wedding ceremony’s arrest got here from the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace in Los Angeles, which may have jurisdiction over his case. Davis mentioned Wedding ceremony is anticipated to seem in courtroom on Monday.

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