The controversies surrounding FBI Director Kash Patel were already severe enough to put his future in doubt, but after The Atlantic published a brutal report last week, matters got worse for the former podcast personality. The article, relying on more than two dozen sources, alleged that FBI personnel have expressed concerns about the director’s unexplained absences and excessive drinking, which have alarmed colleagues and potentially created a security risk.
Patel denied the allegations, accused The Atlantic of being part of an elaborate journalistic conspiracy he equated with organized crime, and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the magazine on Monday morning.
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, Senate Democrats quickly seized on the development, calling for the director’s resignation and directing the Justice Department to begin preserving relevant documents in advance of a congressional investigation into Patel’s troubled tenure.
A day later, House Democrats went noticeably further. On Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, not only announced a new investigation into Patel, but the Maryland Democrat and his partisan colleagues also demanded that Patel submit to an alcohol abuse screening. From the written correspondence sent to the bureau’s director:
For the sake of our own security, we need to know, for example, ‘how many drinks containing alcohol do you have on a typical day when you are drinking,’ ‘how often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected from you because of drinking,’ ‘how often during the last year have you needed a first drink in the morning to get yourself going after a heavy drinking session,’ and ‘how often during the last year have you been unable to remember what happened the night before because you had been drinking?’
The Judiciary Committee’s Democrats also sent a parallel letter to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the panel, urging additional security in light of the seriousness of the allegations.
“Given the severity of the national security risks associated with these, we request that you make clear to Director Patel that if he fails to provide the requested information by next week’s deadline, the Committee will be requiring him to appear at a hearing in person and under oath to address Members’ well-founded concerns,” they wrote.
So far, neither Patel nor Jordan has replied. If recent history is any guide, they probably won’t.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump hasn’t exactly scrambled to defend his handpicked FBI director. In fact, the president has been conspicuously quiet about the former podcast personality of late, failing to say his name out loud or online in roughly a month.
The Atlantic’s report added that Patel is “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.” There’s no great mystery as to why.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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