Kash Patel Says He's Suing Over Report Claiming He's Repeatedly Been Intoxicated in Public While FBI Director
Source: MEDIAite
Apr 17th, 2026, 11:17 pm
FBI Director Kash Patel said he will file a lawsuit after The Atlantic published an unflattering report that called into question his fitness for the job. On Friday, the publication ran a piece by Sarah Fitzpatrick, who reported that last week, Patel believed that President Donald Trump had fired him because he was unable to access an FBI computer system:
On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.”. However, the lockout was due to a technical issue, according to two sources familiar with the situation.
The report also said Patel had been intoxicated in public at restaurants in Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas. Moreover, Patel’s FBI security detail reportedly had difficulty waking him on multiple occasions due to excessive alcohol use:
On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for “breaching equipment”—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.
Shortly after the report was published, FBI media flack Erica Knight called the piece “fabricated” and added, “Lawsuit is being filed.”
Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/kash-patel-says-hes-suing-over-report-claiming-hes-repeatedly-been-intoxicated-in-public-while-fbi-director/
REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143652429
Link to The Atlantic article (gift) - The FBI Director Is MIA
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The author of this article was Jen Psaki last night. Patel is threatening to sue.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-director-drinking-absences/686839/?gift=QeYskEo60eBki25Njl7PZdcAAxKPmii92x2cFgCmfEE&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
But Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. He has good reasons to think so—including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking. My colleague Ashley Parker and I reported earlier this month that Patel was among the officials expected to be fired after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ouster, on April 2. “We’re all just waiting for the word” that Patel is officially out of the top job, an FBI official told me this week, and a former official told my colleague Jonathan Lemire that Patel was “rightly paranoid.” Senior members of the Trump administration are already discussing who might replace him, according to an administration official and two people close to the White House who were familiar with the conversations.....
The IT-lockout episode is emblematic of Patel’s tumultuous tenure as director of the FBI: He is erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence, according to the more than two dozen people I interviewed about Patel’s conduct, including current and former FBI officials, staff at law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality-industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and private conversations, they described Patel’s tenure as a management failure and his personal behavior as a national-security vulnerability.
They said that the problems with his conduct go well beyond what has been previously known, and include both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences. His behavior has often alarmed officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice, even as he won support from the White House for his eager participation in Trump’s effort to turn federal law enforcement against the president’s perceived political enemies.
Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.....
Patel’s drinking is no secret. While on official travel to Italy in February, he was filmed chugging beer with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team following their gold-medal victory. The incident prompted the president—who does not drink and whose brother died following a long struggle with alcoholism—to call the FBI director to convey his unhappiness, according to two officials familiar with the call. But officials told me that Patel’s alcohol use goes far beyond the occasional beer. FBI officials and others in the administration have privately questioned whether alcohol played a role in the instances in which he shared inaccurate information about active law-enforcement investigations, including following the murder of Charlie Kirk.
There is a great deal in this article. It will be interesting to see if Patel files a lawsuit or if trump fires him first.
Please note that this attorney provided some great detail about facts that were not in the Atlantic article before the article was published. This attorney is one of the attorneys who filed a dumb lawsuit in Nevada for trump that was dismissed.
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